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WRITINGS OF THE "COUNTRY PARSON/ 



Recreations of a Country Parson. 2 vols. i6mo. 
Comprising First and Second Series, and sold together or 
separately. 

Leisure Hours in Town. 1 vol. i6mo. 

Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson. 1 vol. 
16mo. , ( 

The Every-Day Philosopher in Town and Coun- 
try. 1 vol. 16mo. 

Counsel and Comfort spoken from a City Pulpit. 
1 vol. 16rao. 

Autumn Holidays. 1 vol. i6mo. 



0:^^ The above writings of the " Country Parson " are hand- 
somely bound in muslin, bevelled boards and gilt tops, and are 
uniform in size and style. 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers. 



u 



THE 



Autumn Holidays 



OF A 



COUNTRY PARSON. 




BOSTON: 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS. 

1865. 






author's edition 



Exchange 
Univ. of Mich. 

DEC 3- 1940 



Un'iversity Press: 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. 

Page 
By the Seaside 1 

CHAPTER II. 
Concerning Unpruned Trees 19 

CHAPTER III. 

Concerning Ugly Ducks : being some Thoughts on Mis- 
placed ^Ien .36 

CHAPTER IV. 
Of the Sudden Sweetening of certain Grapes . . 56 

CHAPTER V. 
Concerning the Estimate of Human Beings ... 76 

CHA PTER VI. 
Remembrance 98 

CHAPTER VII. 

On the Forest Hill : with some Thoughts touching 

Dream-Life 109 

CHAPTER VIII. 

A Reminiscence of the Old Time : being some Thoughts 

on Going Away 127 



iv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
CoNCERNiifG Old Enemies 195 



CHAPTER X. 

At the Castle: with some Thoughts on Michael Scott's 

Familiar Spirit ' 175 



CHAPTER XI. 

Concerning the Right Tack : with Some Thoughts on 
THE Wrong Tack 195 

CHAPTER XII. 
Concerning Needless Fears 220 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Beaten 238 

CHAPTER XIV. 
Gossip 244 

CHAPTER XV. 
Akchbishop Whately on Bacon 262 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Some further Talk about Scotch Affairs . . . 291 

CHAPTER XVII. 
From Saturday to Monday 327 



CONCLUMOK 849 






CHAPTER I 



BY THE SEASIDE, 




E have been here a little more than a week, 
all of us together. For if you be a man of 
more than five-and-thirty years, and if you 
have a wife and children, you have doubtless 
found out that the true way to enjoy your autumn holi- 
days, and to be the better for them, is not to go away by 
yourself to distant regions where you may climb snowy 
Alps and traverse glaciers, in the selfish enjoyment of 
new scenes and faces. These things must be left to 
younger men, who have not yet formed their home-ties, 
and who know neither the happiness nor the anxieties 
of human beings, who spread a large surface on any 
part of which fortune may hit hard and deep. Let us 
find a quiet place where parents and children may en- 
joy the time of rest in company ; where you will be 
free from the apprehensions of evil which (unless you 
be a very selfish person) you will not escape when the 
little things are a thousand miles away. And, to this 
end, one may well do without the sight of lakes, water- 
falls, streets, and churches, which it was pleasant once 
on a time to see. Upon this day, last year, I ascended 

1 A 



2 BY THE SEASIDE. 

the marvellous spire of Strasburg Cathedral. It was 
the brightest of all bright days. You went up and up, 
by little stairs winding through a lace-work of stone, 
which it makes one somewhat nervous to think of even 
now, till you emerged on a platform whence you looked 
down dizzily on the market-place hundreds of feet be- 
low ; upon the town, all whose buildings looked so 
clean and well-defined in the smokeless air ; upon the 
fertile level plain, stretching away towards Baden ; and 
the ugly poplars, marking the course of the Rhine. It 
was all, to an untravelled man and an enthusiastic lover 
of Gothic architecture, interesting beyond expression : 
yet I would much rather be here. 

For this is Saturday morning, and my parish is far 
away. There is no sermon to be thought of for to- 
morrow ; and no multitude of sick folk to see ; no pres- 
sure of manifold parochial cares. This is a very ugly 
cottage by a beautiful shore ; and, through a simple pe- 
cuniary negotiation, the cottage is ours for the months 
of August and September. Looking up from this table, 
and looking out of the window, the first object you 
would see is a shaggy little fuchsia, covered with red 
flowers, waving about in a warm western wind. Be- 
yond, there is a small expanse of green grass, in which 
I see, with entire composure, a good many weeds which 
would disquiet me much if the grass were my own. 
The little lawn is bounded by a wall of rough stone, 
half concealed by shrubs. And on the farther side, the 
top of the wall cutting sharp against it, weltering and 
toiling now in shadow, but a minute ago bright in sun- 
shine, with the unnumbered dimple of little waves, 
spreads the sea. Now it has brightened again ; and 



BY THE SEASIDE. 3 

three gleaming sails break the deep blue. Opposite, a 
few miles off, there are grand Highland hills. Some- 
times they look purple ; sometimes, light blue ; some- 
times the sunshine shows a yellow patch of cornfield. 
Never, for more than an hour or two, do those hills and 
tills sea look the same. They are always changing ; 
and the changes are extreme. You could no more tell 
a stranger what this place is like, by describing it ever 
so accurately as it is at this moment, than you could 
worthily represent the most changeful human face by a 
single photograph. In the sunset you may often see 
what will make you understand the imagery of the Rev- 
elation, — a sea of glass mingled with fire; then the 
mountains -are of a deep purple hue, such as you would 
think exaggerated if you saw it in a picture. Hardly 
have the crimson and golden lights faded from the 
smooth water, when a great moon, nearly full, rises 
above the trees on this side, and casts a long golden 
path, flickering and heaving ; the stillness is such that 
you fear to break it by a footfall. Then there have 
been times, even within this week, when drenching 
showers darkened the water and hid the opposite hills ; 
or when white-crested waves made the sea into a wild, 
ridgy plain, and broke on the shingle hard by in foam 
and thunder. 

This is not a fashionable watering-place ; you go back 
to a quiet and simple life, coming here. No band of 
music plays upon the black wooden pier, where the rare 
steamboat calls daily. There is no such thing as a gay 
promenade, frequented by brightly dressed people de- 
sirous to see and to be seen. There is no reading- 
room, no billiard-room, no circulating library, no hotel, 



4 BY THE SEASIDE. 

no people who let out boats, no drinking-fountain. 
There is a post-office ; but it is a mile distant. You 
would find here no more than a line of detached houses, 
a few extremely pretty, and more of them extremely 
ugly, reaching for somewhat more than a mile along the 
sea-shore. The houses, each with its shrubbery and 
lawn, greater or less, stand on a strip of level ground 
between the sea and a rocky wall of cliff, which follows 
the line of the beach at no great distance ; doubtless an 
ancient sea margin. But now it serves as a beautiful 
background to the jDretty houses, and it almost redeems 
the ugly ones ; it is covered richly with trees, which 
through ages have rooted themselves in the crevices of 
the rock ; and where the perpendicular wall forbids that 
vegetation, it is clothed with ivy so luxuriant, that you 
would hardly think those hearty leaves ever knew the 
blighting " salt spray. By the sea-shore there runs a 
highway; the waves break within a few yards on a 
beach of rough shingly gravel. It is to be confessed, 
that this charming place lacks the level sand which the 
ebbing tide leaves for a firm, cool walking space at some 
time of every day. But your walks are not confined to 
the path to right and left along the sea-shore. You will 
discover pleasant ways, that lead to the country above 
the wooded and ivied cliff; and there j^ou will find ripen-, 
ing harvest fields, and paths that wind through fragrant 
woods of birch, oak, and pine, and here and there the 
mountain-ash, with its glowing scarlet berries. But it 
is not what one understands by a country side : the 
w^hole landscape is gradually, but constantl3% sloping 
upwards, till it passes into dark heathery hills, solitary as 
Tadmor in the wilderness. There the sportsman goes 



BY THE SEASIDE. 5 

in search of grouse and deer ; and thence you have 
views of the level blue water far below you, that are 
worth going many miles to see. 

There are places along this seaside where your only 
walk is beside the sea. The hills rise almost from the 
water, an expanse of shadeless heather. But we are 
happier with our shady woodland walks. When the 
glare and heat are oppressive along the shore in the 
vacant afternoon, let us turn away from the road that 
skirts the beach, up this thickly wooded glen, through 
which a stream brawls from rock to rock, hardly seen 
for the leaves. You will not walk for a few yards im- 
der the pleasant shadow, till you find yourself so envi- 
roned with ivy-grown trees, honeysuckle and wild flow- 
ers, that you might fancy the sea many miles off. And 
the oppressive light and heat and dust are gone. Let 
us go on, following the windings of the path and the 
water, till we reach a spot where a clear little brook, 
tumbling over rocks from far above us, crosses the road 
under a rude arch, to join the larger stream ; and now 
let us sit down on a great stone, where the little brook, 
close by our feet, makes a leap into the dark entrance 
of the bridge. Here let us rest and be thankful. Many 
people find this a feverish world : let us rejoice in a 
nook so green and quiet. Ferns of many kinds cover 
the damp rocks : there is a thick canopy of green leaves 
overhead, through which you may see blinks of the 
brightest blue sky ; and through which you may see an 
intense flickering of light, where the sun is struggling 
to pierce the dense shade. The air is fragrant and cool 
and moist : all around there is a thicket of evergreens 
and underwood, over which the tall trunks arise whose 
spreading branches make our grateful shadow. 



6 BY THE SEASIDE. 

We have all, young and old, wearied for this time ; 
and here it is at last. The cheerful anticipation of it 
was something to help one through laborious summer 
days. For if you are to be in the country no more 
than two months in the year, the months beyond ques- 
tion should be August and September. Let us keep 
our cake as long as we can ; let us make our holiday 
season late. June and July are delightful months amid 
rural scenes ; but it would be dismal to go back to the 
hot town at the end of July, and think one had settled 
down for the winter. But, at the beginliing of October, 
a little space of long dark evenings, and the growing 
crispness of the morning air, help to make one feel 
ready to take with good heart to the laboring oar again. 

Yet, though this holiday time be so enjoyed by antici- 
pation, I think that when the day comes on which you 
preach to your own congregation for the last time be- 
fore leaving, you feel it rather a trial ; and you turn 
your back upon your church with some regret and some 
misgiving. A clergyman's work is not like any other ; 
you have not quite the school-boy's feeling when work- 
ing days are over and holidays begin. For your work 
is not merely your duty, it is your happiness too ; and 
though some folk may not understand it, you feel it 
something of a privation to think on a Sunday in your 
play-time that the bells are ringing, and the people 
assembling in the familiar place, and you not there. 
Happily, there are regions in this world where the 
clergyman's last Sunday at church, is likewise the last 
Sunday at church of a great part of the congregation. 
It is gathered, as usual, one day ; and the next, scat- 
tered far and wide, by the seaside and among the hills. 



BY THE SEASIDE. 7 

And in this uncertain world, where when many hun- 
dreds of human beings are in one place to-day, no one 
can say who may be missing when they meet after some 
weeks' separation, I think that you, my friend, will 
preach with special kindness and heartiness on your 
last Sunday at home ; and that you will be heard with 
special attention and sympathy. There will be a very 
perfect stillness as you pronounce the blessing for what 
may be the last time. And you will well remember the 
words and the music of the parting hymn. Taking 
your final look round your vestry, and round your emp- 
tied church, as you come away, you will feel the sorrow 
and anxiety which come of the vain delusion common 
to man, that the place where you worked and labored 
your best will not go on quite as well in your absence. 
Ah, my friend, some day you and I must leave our sev- 
eral churches for ever ; and though we shall be kindly 
remembered and missed there for a while, they will come 
by and by to do without us. And very fit and right 
too. We are not such self-conceited fools as to wish 
it were otherwise. Yet it is cheering, each Tuesday 
morning through the holidays, when the letter comes by 
post, in which a kind friend, whom duty ties to his 
town work at this season, tells how all went well in the 
services of the Sunday before. 

Then, following that parting day, comes one of con- 
fusion and worry and fatigue, — the day on which the 
family accomplishes the journey to the distant resting- 
place. Would that the age might come when human 
beings shall be able to do without baggage ! Yet even 
baggage serves good moral ends. You are very thank- 
ful indeed, when, in the quiet evening, the cottage, or 



8 BY THE SEASIDE. 

the more ambitious dwelling, is reached at last ; and 
the manifold packing-cases, being counted up, are found 
to be all right. During the day, several times, you had 
quite resigned yourself to the conviction that half of 
them would never be found more. 

There are simple statements which may be repeated 
many times, while yet no wise man will pull you up by 
declaring that he has heard the like before ; for such 
simple statements are the irrepressible outflow of the 
present happy mood and feeling. Yon could not help 
uttering such, to any one to whom you might be talking 
out your heart. Suffer me now to declare, that there is 
no more precious blessing than rest. "The end of 
work is to enjoy rest." " The end and the reward of 
toil is rest." Yes, it is delightful to rest for a while 
from even the most congenial and beloved work. And 
rest is not merely delightful ; it is needful. The time 
comes when the task drags heavily ; when it is got 
through heartlessly, and by a painful effort often re- 
newed. Most busy men, busied with work that wears 
the brain and nervous system, have some little time of 
rest in their daily round, — some precious hour of quiet. 
There is generally the short breathing space between 
dinner and tea. But, as months pass, the nerves grow 
so irritable that many sounds and circumstances worry 
you ; then is the hour when the organ-grinder painfully 
thrills you through. At this stage, busy men find the 
relief of a little pause, — a day or two away from work, 
no matter where. Arnold said, that the most restful days 
of the year were those spent in the long journeys by 
coach between Rugby and Fox How. A very eminent 



BY THE SEASIDE. 9 

and over-driven man lately told me, that when he is be- 
ing jvrought into a fever, he finds rest by going to Lon- 
don by the express train, and returning the next day. 
The distance is four hundred miles going, and the like 
returning, — eleven hours either way. But it is enjoy- 
able to lean back in the carriage ; to read and to muse, 
— sure that no one will speak to him on the business 
of his profession. I have heard of a great man who 
found the hke relief in going to bed for two days or so. 
There was physical repo§e ; and even the unreasonable 
caller and tormentor, who would utterly disregard the 
assurance that the Doctor was weary and could see no 
one, was beaten by the assurance that the Doctor was in 
bed. For the average human being, on being told that 
the Doctor could see no one, would instantly say, " 0, 
but I know he will see me ! " But- not even these re- 
treats will stay the gathering weariness which grows on 
body and mind as the seasons pass. And if you have 
been at work from the beginning of October to the end 
of July, — ten months with little relaxation, — then you 
have fairly earned the autumn holiday-time. And your 
rest will be not merely the reward of past work, but the 
preparation for future. You are laying up the strength, 
spirit, and patience needful for the winter months, if 
you are to see that time. And you must act on the cal- 
culation that you are to see it. On dark Sunday after- 
noons in January, when gas is lit throughout the church, 
and snow lies in the wintry streets, you may preach 
your sermon with the greater heart and vigor for the 
hours you sit now on a stone by the seaside, looking at 
the waves, and for the bracing breezes that supply the 
ozone the city lacks. So the diligent clergyman is as 
1* 



10 BY THE SEASIDE. 

mucli in the way of duty while enjoying his autumn 
rest as while fulfilling the work of the remainder of^the 
year. 

That you may thoroughly enjoy the autumn holidays, 
it is essential that you should feel that they have been 
fairly earned by long and hard work. You cannot feel 
the delight of rest, unless by contrast with toil, hurry, 
and weariness. All this quiet and beauty, to you and 
me grateful as water to the thirsty, would be to people 
who habitually live an idle life no better than some- 
thing insufferably dull and stupid. Let us hope that 
we have faithfully gone through the previous discipline, 
that will make us relish simple quiet and peace. Some 
people think it shows humility to say things against 
themselves which they know are not true. They meek- 
ly confess sins of which they are aware they are not 
guilty ; saying what they suppose must be true, instead 
of what they feel to be true. Let us never do the like. 
Few thmgs are more fatal to a true and h"onest spirit. 
For myself, I will say, without reserve, that in these 
last ten months I have worked to the very best of my 
abihty and strength to fulfil my duty. And, if not very 
much after all, I have done what I could. I can say 
the like for certain dear friends in my own profession. 
They never wilfully neglect any work ; they never see 
any thing that ought to be done, without trying to do it. 
Unprofitable servants, doubtless, in the sight of One 
above us ; but, at least, we can look our fellow-men in 
the face. 

1 suppose, my readers, we have all a picture in our 
minds of the ideal autumn holidays. They never have 
come; they are never to be. Yet we can think of 



BY THE SEASIDE. 11 

broad harvest fields, golden in sunshine ; of magnificent 
trees, the growth of centuries ; of green glades, with the 
startled deer ; of the gray Gothic dwelling, large and 
hospitable ; of a mode of life in which sickness, anxiety, 
vague fears, and pinching eflTorts to save shillings, are 
quite unknown. Yes, it is to be admitted that this ugly 
little cottage and its surroundings, physical and moral, 
are no more than a makeshift. But then, my friend, 
what more is all our life, and all our lot ? We must 
make them do ; we have great reason to be thankful for 
things as they are : but all this is not what we used to 
think of, when we were Uttle children or hopeful youths. 
Let us train ourselves to look at lights rather than 
dai'ks. There is such a thing as an eye for lights, and 
such a thing as an eye for darks. You know, when you 
look at a grand Gothic window, — the eastern window 
of a noble church ; and when you look at a much smaller 
Gothic window, you may look either at the dark tracery 
of stone, or at the lights of gorgeous storied glass. Now, 
in a physical sense, it is well to look at each in turn. 
You may behold a really excellent wdndow by this, — 
that the darks are beautiful in form, if you fix your at- 
tention on them only ; and the lights are likewise beau- 
tiful in form, if you consider them by themselves. An 
inferior architect will give you the tracery beautiful, but 
the lights shapeless ; or the lights pretty, but the tracery 
ugly. But, though it is well physically to have an eye 
for both darks and lights, it is best, usually, to look 
mainly at lights, as you contemplate the grand Gothic 
window of your lot and of circumstances. For many 
people look at the darks to the exclusion of the lights. 
They dwell on the worries of their condition, to the for- 



12 BY THE SEASIDE. 

getfulness of its blessings and advantages. They con- 
template the smoky chimney of their dining-room, to the 
forgetfulness of a hundred good tilings. They try to get 
other people to do th6 like. My friend Smith told me, 
that, once on a time, he had Mr. Jones to preach in his 
church. Smith's church holds fifteen hundred people, 
;vnd it is perfectly filled by its congregation ; of this cir- 
cumstance Smith is pardonably proud. When Mr. 
Jones preached, the church was quite crowded, save 
that three seats (not pews, seats for a single person 
each) were vacant in a front gallery. But so keen was 
Mr. Jones's eye for darks, to the oblivion of lights, that 
after service he merely said to Smith, that he had re- 
marked three seats empty in the gallery. Not one 
thought or word had he for the fourteen hundred and 
ninety-seven seats that were filled. Smith was a little 
mortified. But by and by he remembered, that the pe- 
culiar disposition of Mr. Jones was one that would in- 
flict condign punishment upon itself. Then he was 
sorry, rather than angry. Yes, my friend, let us be 
glad, if we have an eye for the lights of life, rather than 
for its darks ! 

It is curious, how very soon the burden drops from 
one's back, when you come for your holidays to some 
place far away from your home and your duty. The 
relief is in direct proportion to the distance in miles. 
A hundred miles will suffice ; a thousand are better. 
Very lightly does the care of your parish rest on you, 
when the parish is a thousand miles distant ! Even a 
tenth part of that amount makes one feel as a horse 
must, when its harness is removed, and its shoes taken 
off, and it is turned out to grass. As you put on a 



BY THE SEASIDE. 13 

tweed suit, and adopt a wide-awake hat, you forget the 
responsibilities and labors of past months ; you cease to 
be the same man. The careful lines are' smoothed out 
of your face ; the hair pauses in growing gray. It is 
necessary, indeed, to the true sense of rest, that you 
should have the feeling of a good long horizon of time 
before you. A few days in the countiy, with the feel- 
ing that you are just going back to work, will not do ; 
the feverish pulse will keep by you. It is quite a differ- 
ent thing, when you know you have several weeks in 
prospect. Then you expatiate ; then you truly rest. 
Those good men who remain within a few miles of their 
parish, and who go back for each Sunday's duty, do not 
enjoy the feeling of the holiday-time at all. And feel- 
ing is the reality. It is not what a thing is in itself, but 
how it presents itself to you. You know how different 
a thing a railway-station, thirty miles from home, looks 
to you when you are to stop at it, and when you are to 
go on three hundred miles further. 

It is pleasant, and at first a little perjDlexing, instead 
of setting to work after breakfast, to go forth and wan- 
der about the shore, or sit on a rock as long as you 
please, with the sense that you are neglecting nothing 
that needs to be done. You feel, as regards time, as a 
poor man who has suddenly inherited a Jarge fortune 
must feel towards money. Strange, to have so much 
to spare of the thing of which before one had so little ! 
And how misty and unreal the scenes and the life that 
are distant and past grow to be! I cannot at this 
minute, sitting on a warm stone by the sea in the morn- 
ing sunshine, feel that at the entrance to a certain 
square stands in this same sunshine, with a Httle shrub- 



14 BY THE SEASIDE. 

bery before it, a certain church, Ionic as to its front 
elevation, which the writer well knows. It is always 
there when I go back; but I do not know what be- 
comes of it in the mean while. 

There is nothing more certain than this, that it will 
not answer to go to your resting-place to spend your 
holiday-time, without having thought of what you are 
to do while there. If the truth were told, it would be 
the confession of many men, that the enjoyment of their 
holidays was all in the anticipation and the retrospect ; 
and that the holidays themselves were a very disap- 
pointing and tiresome time, very listless and weary. 
All this comes of their vaguely believing that, to enjoy 
the season of rest, all you have to do is to go to some 
quiet, retired place, and then some occupation will sug- 
gest itself, some mode of getting the due enjoyment out 
of the long-expected time. A clergyman might just as 
wisely ascend his pulpit, without having thought of what 
he is to say from it of his text and his sermon, and 
count upon these turning up at the moment they are 
needed. Before going to the seaside, you should care- 
fully consider what you are to do there, and map out 
some little plan of life ; not adliering to it, of course, 
should some pleasant deviation suggest itself. And 
every one must devise such a plan for himself, accord- 
ing to his own liking. Only let it be remembered, that 
it will not do to be absolutely vacant. Time will hang 
heavy ; and then enjoyment is at an end. Different 
men have devised different modes of light occupation 
for their holiday-time ; and that wliich suited one man 
might be most unsuitable for another. IVIr. Jay, the 
eminent Non-conformist of Bath, tells us that it helped 



BY THE SEASIDE. 15 

liim to thoroughly enjoy his vacation, to write one 
little sermon in the morning of each day, and another 
in the evening. The sermons were certainly very 
brief; you might read each in five minutes; yet not 
every preacher would have regarded it as recreation to 
produce them. There are very many to whom sermon- 
writing does not come so easily ; to whom a sermon is 
the thought of a week, not the diversion of an hour. 
Let it be said, that Mr. Jay's little sermons now fill four 
volumes, under the title of Morning and Evening Exer- 
cises ; they pro\dde a little pious reading for the morn- 
ings and evenings of a year. The writer is so very- 
warm a Churchman, that he seldom looks at the vol- 
umes without regretting that the good man was not 
one ; the more so, as it is plain that no conscientious 
scruple kept him out of his national church. Yet, let 
it be said, that if you read the little discourses daily, for 
a year, you will leave off with a very kindly and pleas- 
ant impression of their author. It is not that any one 
discourse is in any way specially brilliant, but that all 
are so evenly good ; and they treat, in the most ad- 
mirable spirit, not the matters on which good Christians 
differ, but those on which they all agree. 

For men to whom the writing of sermons is not re- 
laxation, but rather work, yet whose likings are quiet 
and scholarly, certain rules may be suggested. In ad- 
dition to the physical employment of mountain excur- 
sions, yachting, riding, shooting, and the like, let abun- 
dance of reading be provided. Let the Times daily tell 
how the great world goes ; let plenty of other news- 
papers come besides. Thus post-time will be a fresh 
sensation, even if very few letters appear, and these of 



16 BY THE SEASIDE. 

very small interest. And, besides as many pleasant 
new books as you can get, let there be some large work, 
of many volumes, read perhaps long ago, yet worth 
reading again, and which could not be read satisfactorily 
amid the pressure of working days and months. And 
weeks before you come to the seaside, consider what 
this book shall be. Mine, this year, is Lockhart's Life 
of Sir Walter Scott, — an admirable history of a great 
and good man. If you have read it as a boy, read it 
once more as a man ; and you will find how well you 
remember it. It is a sad history, certainly ; and you 
will find many things to be thought of with deep regret : 
yet you will rise from it with a hearty admiration and 
affection for the greatest Scotchman. And often, as 
you go on, you will come on passages that will make 
you pause and muse, with the finger in the half-closed 
book. 

But the writer's special occupation during these holi- 
days is to revise and consider the essays which make 
up this volume. He has very little time now for writ- 
ing such; and the little time is growing less. The 
spare hours of two years have gone to tlie production of 
this little book. It will always be jDleasant to look back 
on time so pleasantly spent. And these chapters have 
already met so kind a reception, as they appeared in 
that dear old magazine in which the writer saw his 
earliest article in print and his latest, and in another 
magazine which professes to publish good words, though 
some people have declared it to be a bad and dangerous 
periodical, that the indulgent reader may easily under- 
stand how this volume has been added to the list of 
certain which have gone before. Let me wish for this 



BY THE SEASIDE. 17 

book, that it may fall into as kind hands as the rest, and 
into as many. 

It is a great thing to have some occupation, in a time 
and place like this, which implies no exertion. It is 
pleasant for a very small author to sit down on a rustic 
seat, under a shady tree, or on a rock by the sea, with 
the murmuring water lapping at one's feet ; and there 
peacefully to read over one's essay. A distinguished 
American author has put on record the feelings with 
which he read his own first book. He says frankly, 
" I never read a more interesting volume ! " Under 
the shadow of that illustrious precedent, it may be con- 
fessed, that though, when busy with serious work, you 
have something else to do tlian to read your own com- 
positions, yet, in a season of leisure, it is light and 
pleasant employment for an author to do so. Some- 
body, once on a time, sent me a lengthened and friendly 
criticism of these essays, in which it was yet mentioned, 
as a ground of complaint, that no mental exertion was 
needful to follow them. That is precisely what their 
author wished ; and he will be too glad to think that it 
is so. He has pioneered the road, through the jungle 
and up the pass : he trusts it is smooth and easy. Yet 
let it be said, that what is easy to read is, for the most 
part, difficult to write. 

Let me be allowed a closing word. Wliy does the 
writer call himself a country parson'? Years have 
passed since he left that beautiful green valley, with 
the river, the trees, and the hills, and went to a great 
city. But country parson is the name that suits him, 
and the name by which many kind friends know him. 
So he calls himself by it, just as his friend Smith calls 



18 BY THE SEASIDE. 

himself Smith. It is not that that individual is a smith 
in fact; but that Smith is the name by which people 
have agreed to call and know him. The ancestor who 
first bore the name was in fact a smith ; and the name 
of Smith continued to be handed down, after the fact of 
smith ceased. So let it be with the author's cherished 
designation. 

And there is more. Though he now does the duty 
of a parish in a great city, it is the city in which, above 
all others, country and town are mingled in the most 
cliarming way. In the parish which he serves, you 
may even find beautiful shady walks, and expanses 
of grass and flowers, where you might think yourself 
far from town smoke and bustle ; and indeed you are : 
for in that most beautiful of cities, there is no smoke 
and little bustle. May it be always so. 




CHAPTER II. 



CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 




N this writing-table, here in a great city, 
there lie two large pruning-knives, unused 
for five years. They look inconsistent 
enough with the usual belongings of the 
work-room of the incumbent of a town parish, who, on 
week-days, walks about chiefly upon paving-stones, and 
on Sundays preaches to city folks. .But Britons know 
that there are institutions which the wise man would 
preserve, though their day and their use have passed 
away ; so is it with these knives, — buckhorn as to.their 
handles, and black with rust as to their blades. The 
writer will never cast them away ; will never lock them 
up in a drawer rarely visited, degrading them from the 
prominent and easily reached spot where they lay in 
years that are gone. Never again, in all likelihood, 
will those knives be used by the hand that was wont to 
use them ; yet they serve their owner well when they 
bring back the pleasant picture of days when he was a 
country parson, and pruned many shrubs and trees ; 
walking about leisurely in the enjoyment of snipping off, 
as a schoolmaster of my youth was accustomed to walk 



20 CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 

down the rows of boys, busy in writing, here and there 
coming down with a heavy lash on some unlucky back, 
merely for his own recreation, and with no moral aim. 
Yes, there is a tranquil delight in pruning ; to a simple 
and unfevered mind, it is a very fascinating pursuit. 
And it is a good sign of a man, if he finds pleasure in it. 
Alas, we outgrow the days in which it makes us happy 
to prune trees ! 

The reader, who is given to pruning, knows how very 
much some trees need it. You know how horribly 
awkward and ugly an old bay becomes, after it has been 
untended for years. It has great branches which stick 
out most ungracefully. And it is likely enough that 
the whole tree is so inextricably grown into that un- 
gainly form, that it is best to saw it off about three or 
four feet from the ground, and to let it begin to grow 
anew. Thus, starting afresh, you may be able to make 
it a pretty and graceful object, though of much dimin- 
ished size. There are trees whose nature is such that 
they can do with little or no pruning. They don't need 
to be watched ; they cost no trouble. Such is a Portu- 
gal laurel ; such is a weeping birch ; such is a beech ; 
such is an oak. But not such is an Irish jew ; not such 
is an apple-tree, nor any kind of fruit-tree. And in the 
days when you were the possessor of trees, and were 
sometimes a good deal worried by the charge of them, I 
know you often thought what a blessing it is that there 
are some that need no pruning ; some that, once put in 
their place, you may let alone. For there were some 
that needed ceaseless tending ; they grew horrible, un- 
less you were always watching them, and cutting off this 
and that little shoot that was growing in a wrong dircc- 



CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 21 

tion. It was an awful thing, standing beside some tree 
that had given you a gTeat amount of trouble, to think 
what it would come to if it were just left to itself. 

Most human beings are very like the latter order of 
trees ; they need a great deal of pruning. Little odd 
habits, the rudiments of worse habits, need every now 
and then to be cut off and corrected. We should all 
grow very singular, ridiculous, and unamiable creatures, 
but for the pruning we have got from hands kind and 
unkind, from our earliest days ; but for the pruning we 
are getting from such hands yet. Perhaps you have 
known a man who had lived for forty years alone. And 
you know what odd shoots he had sent out; what 
strange traits and habits he had acquired ; what singu- 
lar little ways he had got into. There had been no one 
at home to prune him ; and the little shoots of eccentri- 
city, of vanity, of vain self-estimation, that might have 
easily been cut off when they were green and soft, have 
now grown into rigidity. Woody fibre has been devel- 
oped ; and if you were to try to cut off the oddity now, 
it would be like trying to lop off a tough oak branch a 
foot thick with a penknife. You cannot do it ; if you 
were to succeed in doing it, you would thereby change 
the whole man. Equally grown into rigid awkward- 
ness with the man who has lived a very sohtary life, 
the man is likely to be, who, for many years, has been 
the pope of a httle circle of admiring disciples, no one 
of whom would ever contradict him, no one of whom 
would ever venture to say he judged or did wrong. In 
such a case, not merely are the angularities, the odd, un- 
gainly shoots, not cut off; they are actually fostered. 
And a really good man grows into a bundle of awk- 



22 CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 

wardnesses and oddities, and stiffens hopelessly into 
these. And these greatly lessen his influence and use- 
fulness with people who do not know his real excellen- 
ces. You cannot read the life of Mr. Simeon, of Cam- 
bridge, without lamenting that there was not some kind 
yet firm hand always near him, to prune off the 
wretched little shoots of self-conceit and silliness which 
obscured, in great measure, the sterling qualities of the 
man. You may remember reading how, on an occa- 
sion on which some good ladies had collected pieces of 
needle-work to be sold for a missionary purpose, he 
came to behold them. He skipped into the room, held 
up his hands in a theatrical ecstasy of admiration, and 
went through various ungainly gambols, and uttered 
various wretched jokes, by way of compliment to the 
good ladies. I don't tell you the story at length ; it is 
too humiliating. Now do you think the good man 
would ever have done this, had he lived among people 
who durst question his infallibility and impeccability ? 
What a blessing it would have been for him had there 
been some one on such terms with him that he could 
say, " Now, Simeon, dear fellow, don't make a fool of 
yourself ! " 

It is at once apparent, that when some really kind 
and judicious friend, or even some judicious person who 
is not a kind friend, says to you, as you are saying 
something, " Smith, you're talking nonsense ; shut up, 
and don't make a fool of yourself," tliis fact is highly 
analogous to the fact of a keen pruning-knife snipping 
off a shoot that is growing in a wrong direction. And 
you may have seen a good man, accustomed to dwell 
among those who never dared to differ from him, look 



CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 23 

as if the world were suddenly coming to an end, when 
some courageous person said to his face what many per- 
sons had frequently said behind his back ; to wit, that 
he was talking nonsense. You may find a house here 
and there in which the gray mare is the more energetic, 
if not the better horse ; where the husband has been 
constrained by years of outrageous ill-temper to give 
the wife her own way ; and where, accordingly, the 
mistress of the house has lived for thirty years without 
once being told she did wrong. The tree, that is, had 
never been pruned in all that time ; and you may im- 
agine what an ugly and disagreeable tree it had grown. 
For people who get their own way have nothing to 
repress their evil and ridiculous tendencies, except their 
own sense of propriety ; and I have little faith in the 
practical guidance of that sense, unless it be reinforced 
and directed by the moral and aesthetic sense of other 
people. A tree, when pruned, suffers in silence ; no 
doubt, it cannot like being pruned ; it would like to 
have its own way. But the pruning of a human being, 
accustomed to his or her own way, is often accompanied 
by much moral kicking and howhng. Such a person, 
in those years without pruning, has very likely got con- 
firmed in many ridiculous and disagreeable habits ; has 
learned to sit with his feet upon the mantle-piece ; has 
come to use ungrammatical and ugly forms of speech ; 
has grown into rubbing his nose, or twirling his thumbs, 
or making pills of paper while conversing with others. 
Indeed there is no reckoning the ugly growths into 
which un pruned human nature will develop itself; and 
self-conceited and haughty and petted folk deliberately 
deprive themselves of that salutary tending and pruning 



24 CONCERNINrx UNPRUNED TREES. 

which is needful to keep them in decent shape. There 
was once a man, who was much given to advocating the 
admission of fresh air ; an excellent end. But, of course, 
in advocating it, the word ventilation had frequently 
to be used ; and that man made himself ridiculous in the 
eyes of all educated people by invariably pronouncing 
the word as ventulation. For a long time, a youthful 
relative of that man suffered in silence the terrible an- 
noyance of listening to the word thus rendered ; and 
there are few more irritating things among the minor 
vexations of life than to be compelled habitually to 
listen to some vulgar and illiterate error in speech. 
Perhaps you have felt a burning desire to prune a j^er- 
son, who talked of some trouble being tremendiwus ; or 
who said, he would rather go to Jericho as hear Dr. 
Log preach ; or who declared, the day to be that hot 
that he was nearly killed. Oh, the thought of such ex- 
pressions makes one's nerves tingle, and one's hand 
steal towards the pruning-knife. But after long en- 
durance, the youthful relative of the man who talked 
about ventulation could stand it no longer, and ven- 
tured humbly to suggest that ventilation was the pref- 
erable way of setting forth the word. Ah, the tree did 
not take the pruning peaceably ! Wasn't there an ex- 
plosion of vanity and spite and stupidity ? Was not 
the youthful individual scorched with furious sarcasm, 
for pretending to know better than his seniors, and for 
venturing to think that his betters could go wrong! 
From that day forward, he resolved that however hide- 
ous the shoots of ignorance and conceit his seniors put 
forth, he would not venture to correct them. For there 
is nothing that so infuriates an uneducated and self- 



CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 25 

sufficient man of more tlian middle age, as tlie faintest 
and best-disguised attempt to prune him. " Are you 
sure that your data is correct ? " said a vulgar rich man 
to an educated poor man. " Data are correct, I think 
you mean," said the poor man (rather hastily), before 
going on to answer the question. The rich man's face 
reddened like an infuriated turkey-cock; and had there 
been a cudgel in his hand, he would have beaten the 
pniner upon the head. Yes; it is thankless work to 
wield the moral pruning-knife. 

Probably among the class of old bachelors you may 
find the most signal instances of the evil consequence 
of going through life with nobody to prune one. I 
could easily record such manifestations of silliness and 
absurdity in the case of such men as would be incredi- 
ble. Of course I am not going to do so. An old bach- 
elor of some standing, living in a solitary house, with 
servants who dare not prune him, and with acquaint- 
ances who will not take the trouble to prune him, must 
necessarily, unless he be a very wise and good man, 
grow into a most amorphous shape. I beg the reader 
to mark the exception I make : for I presume he will 
agree with me when I say, that in the class of old bach- 
elors and old maids may be found some of the noblest 
specimens of the human race. A judicious wife is 
always snipping oflP from her husband's moral nature lit- 
tle twigs that are growing in wrong directions. She 
keeps him in shape, by continual pruning. If you say 
anything silly, she will affectionately tell you so. If you 
declare that you will do some absurd thing, she will find 
means of preventing your doing it. And by far the 
chief part of all the common sense there is in this world 
2 



26 CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 

belongs unquestionably to women. The wisest thing a 
man commonly does are those which his wife counsels 
him to do. It is not always so. You may have known 
a man do, at the instigation of his wife, things so mali- 
cious, petty, and stupid, that it is inconceivable any man 
should ever do them at all. But such cases are excep- 
tional. 

My friend Jones, when a boy of fourteen, went to 
visit a relative, a rich old bachelor. That relative was 
substantially a very kind person ; that is, he gave 
Jones lots of money, and the like. But Jones, an ob- 
servant lad, speedily took his relative's measure. The 
first evening Jones was with him, the old bachelor said, 
in a very cordial way, " Now, Tom, my boy, it is my 
duty to tell you something. You have been trained up 
to believe that your father" (a clergyman) "is an able 
and dignified person. It is right that you sliould know 
that he is a very poor stick." 

Jones listened, without remark, but with rather a 
scared face. It was a trial to the young fellow. It 
was a shock to his belief in things in general, to hear 
his father thus spoken of. And Jones, who is now a 
man, tells me that though he said nothing, he inwardly 
groaned, looking at his wealthy relative. "You're a 
horrid old fool." And in all the years that have passed 
since then, Jones assures me he has not in the least 
modified that early opinion. 

Now, don't you feel that no married man would have 
so behaved ? Even if he were such an ass as to begin 
to say such a thing to a little boy, don't you feel his wife 
(if present) would have taken care that the sentence 
was never finished ? 






CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 27 

The- same person began to tell Jones about the opera ; 
and all of a sudden, to the lad's consternation, he burst 
out into some awful roars. Jones was terrified. He 
tliought his relative had gone mad, or was suddenly 
seized by some unusual and terrible disease. But the old 
gentleman said, with great self-complacency, "That 's just 
to give you some idea what the human voice is capable 
of! " Jones secretly thought that it gave him some idea 
what a fool an old gentleman might make of himself. 

I have heard of an extremely commonplace man, who 
lived an utterly solitary life in London. He had gained 
considerable wealth : but he had nothinoj else to stand 
on ; and he was not rich enough to stand on that alone. 
The worthy man has been in his grave for many years. 
Having heard that Mr. Brown had stated that he did 
not know him, he exclaimed : " He does not know me ! 
Well, there is no act of Parliament to make people know 
about me. All I can say is, that if he does not know 
about me, he is an ill-informed man ! " This was not a 
joke. It was said in bitter earnest. For when a young 
fellow who was present showed a tendency to smile at 
this outburst of self-conceit nursed in solitude, the young 
fellow was furiously ordered out of the room. 

Doubtless you have remarked, with satisfaction, how 
the little oddities of men who marry rather- late in life 
are pruned away speedily after their marriage. You 
ha've found a man who used to be shabbily and carelessly 
dressed, with a huge shirt-collar frayed at the edges, 
and a glaring yellow silk pocket handkerchief, broken 
of these things, and become a pattern of neatness. You 
have seen a man whose hair and whiskers were ridic- 
ulously cut speedily become like other human be- 



28 CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 

ings. You have seen a clergyman, wlio wore a long 
beard, in a little while appear without one. You have 
seen a man, who used to sing ridiculous, sentimental 
songs, leave them off. You have seen a man who 
took snufF copiously, and who generally had his breast 
covered with snufF, abandon the vile habit. A wife 
is the grand wielder of the moral pruning-knife. If 
Johnson's wife had lived, there would have been no 
hoarding up of bits of orange peel, no touching all the 
posts in walking along the street, no eating and drink- 
ing with a disgusting voracity. If Oliver Goldsmith 
had been married, he would never have worn that mem- 
orable and ridiculous coat. Whenever you find a man 
whom you know little about, oddly dressed, or talking 
absurdly, or exhibiting any eccentricity of manner, you 
may be tolerably sure that he is not a married man. 
For the little corners are rounded off, the little shoots 
are pruned away, in married men. Wives generally 
have much more sense than their husbands, especially 
when the husbands are clever men. The wife's advices 
are like the ballast that keeps the ship steady. They 
are like the wholesome though painful shears, snipping 
off little growths of self-conceit and folly. 

So you may see, that it is not good for man to be 
alone. For he will put out various shoots at his own 
sour will, which will grow into monstrously ugly and 
absurd branches, unless they are pruned away while they 
are young. But it is quite as bad, perhaps it is worse, 
to live among people with whom you are an oracle. 
There are many good Protestants who, by a long con- 
tinuance of such a life, have come to believe their own 
infallibility much more strongly than the pope believes 



CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 29 

his. An only brother amid a large family of sisters is 
in a perilous position. There is a risk of his coming to 
think himself the greatest, wisest, and best of men ; the 
most graceful dancer, the most melodious singer, the 
sweetest poet, the most unerring shot; also the best- 
dressed man, and the possessor of the most beautiful 
hands, feet, eyes, and whiskers. And as the outer world 
is sure not to accept this estimate, the only brother is 
apt to be soured by the sharp contrast between the 
adulation at home and the snubbing abroad. A popular 
clergyman, with a congregation somewhat lacking in in- 
telligence, is exposed to a prejudicial moral atmosphere. 
It is a dreadful sight to see some clergymen surrounded 
by the members of their flock. You see them, with 
dilated nostrils, inhaUng the incense directly and indi- 
rectly offered. It irritates one to hear such a person 
spoken of (as I have heard in my youth) as " the dear 
man," " the precious man," or even, in some cases, " the 
sweet man." It is a great deal too much for average 
human nature to live among people who agree with all 
one says, and think it very fine. We all need " the 
animated No " ; a forest tree will not grow up healthily 
and strong unless you let the rude blasts wrestle with it 
and root it firmer. It is insufferable when any mortal 
lives in a moral hot-house. And if there be anything 
for which a clergyman ought to be thankful, it is if his 
congregation, though duly esteeming him for his office 
and for his work, have so much good sense as to refrain 
from spoiling him by deferring unduly to all his crotch- 
ets. Let there be as few worsted slippers as possible 
sent him ; no bouquets laid on his study table by youth- 
ful hands before he comes down stairs in the morning ; 



30 CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 

no young women preserving under a glass shade the 
glove they wore in shaking hands with him, that it may 
be profaned by no inferior touch. Let the phrase dear 
man be utterly excluded. A manly person does not 
want to be made a pet of. And if there be any occasion 
on which a man of sense, bishop or not, ought to be 
filled with shame and confusion, it is when man or 
woman kneels down and asks his blessing. Pray, how 
much is the blessing worth ? What good will it do 
anybody? Most educated men have a very decided 
estimate of its value, which would be expressed in fig- 
ures by a round O. 

One great good of a great public school is the way 
in wliich the moral pruning-knife is wielded there. I 
do not mean by the masters, but by the republic of 
boys. Many a lad of rank and fortune, in whom the 
evil shoots of arrogance, self-conceit, contempt for his 
fellow creatures, and a notion that he himself is the 
mightiest of mortals, have been fostered at home by the 
adulation of servants, and cottagers, and tenantry, has 
these evil shoots effectually shred away. You have 
heard, of course, how the Duke of Middlesex and 
Southwark came to his title as a baby, and grew up 
under the care of obsequious tutors and governors till 
he had attained the age to go to school. The first even- 
ing he was there, he was standing at a corner of the 
playground, with a supercilious air, surveying the sports 
that were proceeding. A boy about his own size per- 
ceived him, and running up, said, with some curiosity, 
"Who are you?" "The Duke of Middlesex and 
Southwark," was the reply. " Oh," said the other boy, 
with awakened interest, "there's one kick for the 



CONCEKNING UNPRUNED TEEES. 31 

Duke of Middlesex and another for the Duke of South- 
wark " ; and having thus delivered himself, he ran away. 
O. what a sharp pair of shears in that moment pruned 
off cei-tain shoots which had been growing in that little 
peer's nature ever since the dawn of intelligence ! The 
awful yet salutary truth was impressed, by a single les- 
son, that there were places in this world where nobody 
cared for the Duke of Middlesex and Southwark. And 
perhaps that painful pruning was the beginning of the 
discipline which made that duke, as long as he lived, 
the most unpretending, admirable, and truly noble of 
men. 

There are few people in public life who in this age 
are not jDromptly pruned, where needful, by ever-ready 
shears. If the shoots of bumptiousness appear in a 
chief justice, they are instantly cut short by the tongue 
of some resolute barrister. If a prime minister, or 
even a loftier personage, evinces a disposition to neglect 
his or her duty, that disposition is speedily pruned by 
the Times ; speaking in the name of the general sense 
of what is fit. And indeed the newspapers and reviews 
are the universal shears. If any outgrowth of folly, 
error, or conceit appear in a political man, or in a 
writer of even moderate standing, some clever article 
comes down upon it, and shows it up if it cannot snip 
it off. And if a wise man desires that he may keep, 
intellectually and eesthetically, in becoming shape, he will 
attentively consider whatever may be said or written 
about him by people who dishke him. For, as a 
general rule, people who don't like you come down 
sharply upon your real faults ; they tell you things 
which it is very fit that you should know, and which 



32 CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 

nobody is likely to tell you but them. I have heard of 
one or two distinguished authors who made it a rule 
never to read anything that was written about them- 
selves. Probably they erred in this. They missed 
many hints for which they might have been the better. 
And mannerisms and eccentricities developed into rigid 
boughs, which might have been readily removed as 
growing twigs. 

A vain self-confidence is very likely to grow up in a 
man who is never subjected to the moral pruning-knife. 
The greatest men (in their own judgment) that you 
have ever known have probably been the magnates of 
some little village, far from neighbors. Probably the 
bully is never developed more offensively than in some 
village dealer, who has accumulated a good deal of 
money, and who has got a number of the surrounding 
cottages mortgaged to him. Such is the man who is 
likely to insult the conservative candidate, when he 
comes to make a speech before an election. Such is 
the man to lead the opposition to any good work pro- 
posed by the parish clergyman. Such is the man to 
become a church-rate martyr, or an especially oifensive 
manager of Salem chapel. Such is the kind of man 
who, if he has childi'en growing up, will refuse to let 
them express their opinion on any subject. A parent 
can fall into no greater mistake than to take the ground 
that he will never argue with his children, nor hear 
what they may have to suggest in opposition to any 
plan he may have proposed. For childi'en very speed- 
ily take the measure of their parents ; and have a per- 
fectly clear idea how far their ability, judgment, and 
education justify their assuming the rank of infallible 



CONCEKNING UNPKUNED TREES. 33 

oracles. And it is infinitely better to let a lad of eigh- 
teen speak out his mind, than to have him like a boiler 
ready to burst with repressed views and feelings, and 
with the bitter sense of a petty and contemptible tyran- 
ny. Something has already been said of women who 
acquire the chief power in their own houses ; whose 
husbands are cowed into ciphers; and whose infalli- 
bility is to be recognized throughout the establishment, 
under pain of some ferocious explosion. At last, some 
son grows up, and resists the established despotism. 
Infallibility and impeccability are conceded no longer. 
And the thick branches, consolidated by many years' 
growth, are lopped off painfully, which should have 
gone when they were slender shoots. Rely upon it, the 
man or woman who refuses to be peaceably and kindly 
pruned, will some day have to bear being rudely lopped. 

There is one shoot which human nature keeps put- 
ting forth again, however frequently it is pruned away. 
It is self-conceit. That would grow into a terrible un- 
wieldy branch, if it were not so often shred away by 
circumstances; that is, by God's providence. Every- 
body needs to be frequently taken down ; which means, 
to have his self-conceit pruned away. And what every- 
body needs, most people (in this case) get. Most peo- 
ple are very frequently taken down. 

I mean, even modest and sensible people. This 
wretched little shoot keeps growing again, however 
hard we try to keep it down. There is a tendency in 
each of us to be growing up into a higher opinion of 
ourself ; and then, all of a sudden, that higher estimate 
is cut down to the very eaith. You are like a sheep 
suddenly shorn : a thick fleece of self-complacency had 
2* o 



34 CONCERNING UNPRUNED TREES. 

developed itself; something comes and all at once 
shears it off, and leaves you shivering in the frosty air. 
You are like a lawn, where the grass had grown some 
inches in length, till some dewy morning it is mown 
just as close as may be. You had gradually and insen- 
sibly come to think rather well of yourself and your 
doings. You had grown to think your position in life 
a rather respectable or even eminent one, and to fancy 
that those around estimated you rather highly. But all 
of a sudden, some shght, some mortification, some disajD- 
pointment comes ; something is said or done that shows 
you how far you have been deceiving yourself. Some 
considerable place in your profession becomes vacant, 
and nobody thinks of naming you for it. You are in 
company with two or three men who think themselves 
specially charged with finding a suitable person for the 
vacant office : they name a score of possible people to 
fill it, but not you. They never have thought of you : 
or possibly they refrain from naming you, with the de- 
sign of mortifying you. And so you are pruned close. 
For the moment, it is painful. You are ready to sink 
down, disheartened and beaten. You have no energy 
to do anything. You sit down blankly by the fire, and 
acknowledge yourself a failure in life. It is not so 
much that you are beaten, as that you are set in a lower 
place than you hoped. Yet it is all good for us, doubt- 
less. Few men can say they are too humble with it all. 
And as even after all our mowings, prunings, and 
shearings, we are sometimes so conceited and self-satis- 
fied as we are, what should we have been had those 
thinijs not befallen us? The elf-locks of wool would 
have been feet in length. The grass would have been 



CONCEENING UNPRUNED TREES. 85 

six feet high, like that of the prairies. And the shoot 
of vanity would have grown and consolidated into a 
branch, that would have given a lopsided aspect to the 
whole tree. 

Happily, there is no chance of these things occurring. 
We seldom grow for more than a few days, without be- 
ing pruned, mown, and shorn afresh. And all tliis will 
continue to the end. It is not pleasant ; but we need it 
all. And we are all profiting by it. Possibly no one 
will read this page, who does not know that he thinks 
more humbly of himself now than he did ten years 
since ; and ten years hence, if we live, we shall tliink 
of ourselves more humbly still. 

Yes : we have all been severely pruned, in many 
ways. Perhaps our sprays and blossoms have been 
shred away by a knife so unsparing, that we are cut 
very much into the form of a pollarded tree. Perhaps 
we have been pruned too much, and the spring and the 
nonsense taken out of us only too effectually. Certain 
awkward knots are left in the wood, where some cher- 
ished hope was snipped off* by the fatal shears, or some 
youthful affection (in the case of sentimental people) 
came to nothing ; and it was like cutting a tree over, 
not far above the roots, when a man was made to feel 
that his entire aim in life was no better than a dismal 
failure. But it was all for the best ; and defeat, bravely 
borne, is the noblest of victories. What an overbear- 
ing, insolent person you would have been, if you had 
always got your own way, if your boyish fancies had 
come true ! What an odd stick you would have be- 
come, had you been one of the Unpruned Trees ! 



'-^^# 




CHAPTER III. 

CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS : BEING SOME 
THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 




OME men's geese, it has occcasionally been 
said, are all swans. Dr. Newman declares 
that this was so with the great Archbishop 
Whately of Dublin. Read this page, intel- 
ligent person ; and you shall be informed about an Ugly 
Duck, and what it proved in truth to be. 

Rather, you shall be reminded of what you doubt- 
less know already. The story is not mine : it was 
originally devised by somebody much wiser and possibly 
somewhat better. I propose to do no more than tell 
afresh and briefly what has been told at much greater 
length before. No doubt it has touched and comforted 
many to read it. For there may be much wisdom and 
great consolation in a fairy tale. 

Amid a family of little ducks, there was one very 
big, ugly, and awkward. He looked so odd and un- 
couth, that those who beheld him generally felt that he 
wanted a thrashing. And in truth, he frequently got 
one. He was bitten, pushed about, and laughed at by 
all the ducks, and even by the hens, of the house to 
which he belonged. Thus the poor creature was quite 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 37 

cast .down under the depressing sense of his ugliness ; 
and the members of his own family used him worst of 
all. He ran away from home, and lived for a while in 
a cottage with a cat and an old woman. Here, likewise, 
he failed to be appreciated. For chancing to tell them 
how he liked to dive under the water and feel it closing 
over his head, they laughed at him, and said he was a 
fool. All he could say in reply was, " You can't under- 
stand me ! " " Not understand you, indeed," they re- 
pHed in wrath, and thrashed him. 

But he gradually grew older and stronger. One day 
he saw at a distance certain beautiful birds, snow-white, 
vnih. magnificent wings. Impelled by something within 
him, he could not but fly towards them, though expect- 
ing to be repulsed and perhaps killed for his presump- 
tion. But suddenly looking into the lake below him, 
he beheld not the old ugly reflection, but something 
large, white, graceful. The beautiful birds hailed him 
as a companion. The stupid people had thought him 
an ugly duck, because he was too good for them. They 
could not understand him, nor see the great promise 
of that uncouth aspect. The ugly duck proved to be a 
Swan ! 

He was not proud, that wise bird ; but he was very 
happy. Now, everybody said he was the most beau- 
tiful of all beautiful birds ; .and he remembered how, 
once upon a time, everybody had laughed at him and 
thrashed him. Yes : he was appreciated at his true 
value at last! 

Possibly, my fnendly reader, you have known vari- 
ous Ugly Ducks, — men who were held in httle esteem, 
because they were too good for the people among whom 



38 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

they lived, — men who were held in little esteem,, be- 
cause it needed more wit than those around them pos- 
sessed to discern the makings of great and good things 
under their first unpromising aspect. When John Fos- 
ter, many years ago, preaching to little pragmatic com- 
munities of uneducated, stupid, and self-conceited sec- 
taries, was declared by old women and young whipper- 
snappers, to be A PERFECT FOOL, he was an Ugly 
Duck of the first kind. When Keats published his 
earliest poetry, and when Mr. Gifford bitterly showed 
up all its extravagance and mawkishness, and positively 
refused to discern under all that the faculties which 
would be matured and tamed into those of a true poet, 
Keats was an Ugly Duck of the second kind. John 
Foster was esteemed an Ugly Duck at the time when 
he actually was a Swan, because the people who esti- 
mated him were such blockheads that they did not 
know a swan when they saw one. Keats was esteemed 
an Ugly Duck, because he really was an awkward, 
shambling, odd animal ; and his critic had not patience, 
or had not insight, to discern something about him that 
promised he would yet grow into that which a mere 
Duck could never be. For the creature which is by 
nature a Swan, and which will some day be known for 
such by all, may in truth be, at an early stage in its 
development, an uglier, more offensive, more impudent 
and forward, more awkward and more insufferable ani- 
mal, than the creature which is by nature a Duck, and 
which will never be taken for anything more. 

Yes, many men, with the gift of genius in them, and 
many more, with no gift of genius but with a little more 
industry and ability than their fellows, are regarded as 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 39 

little better than fools by the people among whom they 
live; more especially if they live in remote places in 
the country, or in little country towns. Some clay, the 
Swans acknowledge the Ugly Duck for their kinsman : 
and then all the quacking tribe around him recognize 
him as a Swan. Possibly, indeed, even then, some of 
the neighboring ducks who knew him all his life, and 
accordingly held him cheap till the world fixed his 
mark, will still insist that he is no more than an ex- 
tremely Ugly Duck, whom people (mainly out of spite 
against the ducks who were his early acquaintances) 
persist in absurdly calling a Swan. I have beheld a 
Duck absolutely foam at the mouth, when I said some- 
thing implying that another bird (whose name you 
would know if I mentioned it) was a Swan. For the 
Duck, at college, had been a contemporary of the 
Swan : he had even played at marbles with the Swan, 
in boyhood ; and so, though the Swan was quite fixed 
as being a Swan, the Duck never could bear to recog- 
nize him as such. On the contrary, he held him as an 
overrated, impudent, purse-proud, conceited, disagree- 
able, and hideously Ugly Duck. I remember, too, a 
very venomous and malicious old Duck, who never had 
done anything but quack (in an envious and unchari- 
table way too) through all the years which made him 
very old and exceedingly tough, giving an account of 
the extravagances and bombastic flights of a young 
Swan. The Duck vilely exaggerated the sayings of 
that youthful Swan. He put into the Swan's mouth 
words which the Swan had never uttered, and ascribed 
to the Swan sentiments (of a heretical character) which 
he very well knew the Swan abhorred. But even 



40 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

upon the Duck's own showing, there was the promise 
of something fine about the injudicious and warm- 
hearted young Swan; and a little candor and a little 
honesty might have acknowledged this. And it ap- 
peared to me a poor sight to behold the ancient Duck, 
with all his feathers turned the wrong way with sj)ite, 
standing beside a dirty puddle, and stretching his neck, 
and gobbling and quacking out his impotent malice, as 
the beautiful Swan sailed gracefully overhead, perfectly 
unaware of the malignity he was exciting in the muscle 
which served the Duck for a heart. 

It makes me ferocious, I confess it, to hear a Duck, or 
a company of Ducks, abusing and vilifying a Swan ; 
and a good many Ducks have a tendency so to do. If 
you ask one of very many Ducks, " What kind of a bird 
is A?" (A being a Swan), the answer will be, "Oh, a 
very Ugly Duck ! " If the present writer had the faint- 
est pretension to be esteemed a Swan, he would not say 
this. But he knows very well indeed that he can pre- 
tend to no more than to plod humbly and laboriously 
along upon the earth, while other creatures sail through 
the empyrean. He has seen, with wonder, several ill- 
natured attacks upon himself in print, the gravamen of 
the charge against him being that he does not and can- 
not write like A, B, and C, who are great geniuses. 
Pray, Mr. Snarling, did he ever pretend to write like 
A, B, and C ? No ; he pretends to nothing more than 
to produce a homely material (with something real 
about it) that may suit homely folk. And so long as a 
great number of people are content to read what he is 
able to write, you may rely upon it he will go on writ- 
ing. As for you, Mr. Snarling, of course you can write 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 41 

like A, B, and C. And in that case, your obvious course 
is to proceed to do so. And when you do so, you may 
be sure of this ; that the present writer will never twist 
nor misrepresent your words, nor tell lies to your pre- 
judice. 

It is a curious and interesting spectacle to witness 
two Ducks discussing the merits of a Swan. I have 
known a Duck attack a Swan in print. The Swan was 
an author. The Duck attacked the Swan on the ground 
that his style wanted elegance. And I assure you the 
attack, for want of elegance of style, was made in lan- 
guage not decently grammatical. You may have heard 
a Duck attack a Swan in conversation. The Swan was 
a pretty girl. The charge was that the Swan's taste in 
dress was bad. You looked at the Duck, and were 
aware that the Duck's taste was execrable. Would 
that we could " see ourselves as others see us ! " Then 
you would no longer see such sights as this, which we 
may have witnessed in our youth. Two Ducks viciously 
abusing a Swan, flying by ; and pointing out that the 
Swan had lost an eye, also a foot ; and with wearisome 
iteration dwelling on those enormities. And when you 
looked carefully at the spiteful creatures, wagging their 
heads together, hissing and quacking, you were aware 
that (strange to say) each of them had but one foot and 
one eye, and that, in short, in every respect in which 
the Swan was bad, the Ducks were about fifty times 
worse. Thus you may have known a very small and 
shabby Duck, who scoffed at a noble Swan, because (as 
he said) the Swan had no logic. Yet whenever that 
Duck himself attempted to argue any question, he had 
but one course, which was scandalously to misrepresent 



42 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

and distort something said by the man maintaining the 
other opinion, and then to try to raise against that man 
a howl of^heresy. Not indeed that that man, or any 
one of his friends, cared a brass farthing for what the 
shabby little Duck thought or said of him. Yet the 
Duck showed all the will to be a viper, though nature 
had constrained him to abide a Duck. And this was 
the Duck's peculiar logic. 

At this point the reader may pause, and ponder what 
has been said. If exhausted by the mental effort of 
attention, he may take a glass of wine. And then he 
is requested to observe, that the writer considers him- 
self to have made but one step in advance since he 
finished the legend of the Ugly Duck, with which the 
present work commenced. That step in advance was 
to the principle: 

That some men are held in little estima- 
tion BECAUSE THEY ARE TOO GOOD FOR THE PEOPLE 
AMONG WH03I THEY LIVE. ThcSC are my MISPLACED 
MEN. 

Of course, not all misplaced men are what I under- 
stand by Ugly Ducks. For there are men who are 
misplaced by being put in places a great deal too good 
for them. You may have known individuals who could 
not open their mouths but you heard the unmistakable 
quach-quach, who yet gave themselves all the airs of 
Swans. And probably a good many people honestly 
took them for Swans, and other people, prudent, safe, 
and somewhat sneaky people, pretended that they took 
them for Swans, while in fact they did not. And when 
perspicacious persons privately whispered to one anoth- 
er, " That fellow Stuckup is only a duck," it was be- 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 43 

cause in fact he was no more. Yet Stuckup did not 
think himself so. I have not seen many remarkable 
human beings, but I have studied a few with attention ; 
and I can say, with sincerity, that the peculiar animal 
known as the Beggar on Horseback is by far the great- 
est and most important human being I have ever known. 
Probably, my reader, you still hold your breath with 
awe, as you remember your first admission to the pres- 
ence of a person whom you saw to be on horseback, but 
did not know to be a beggar who had attained that emi- 
nence. You afterwards learned the fact ; and then you 
wondered you did not see it sooner. For now the beg- 
gar's dignity appeared to you to bear the like relation 
to that of the true man in such a place, that the strut 
of a king, with a tinsel crown, in a booth at a fair, bears 
to the quiet, assured air of Queen Victoria, walking into 
the House of Lords to open Parliament. 

It is an unspeakable blessing for a man, that he should 
be put down among people who can understand him. 
For no matter whether a man is thought a fool by his 
neighbors because he is too good for them, or because he 
is realy a fool, the depressing effect upon his own mind is 
the same ; unless indeed he have the confidence which 
we might suppose would have gone with the head and 
heart of Shakespeare, if Shakespeare appreciated him- 
self justly. Very likely he did not. John Foster, great 
man as he was, could not have liked to see the little 
meeting-houses at which he held forth gradually getting 
empty, as the people of the congregation went off to 
some fluent blockhead ydili powerful lungs and a vacuous 
head. For many a day Archbishop Whately of Dublin 
was a misplaced man ; feared and suspected just because 



44 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

that clear head and noble heart were so high above the 
sympathy or even the comprehension of many of those 
over whom he M^as set. A bitter little sectary would 
have been at first an infinitely more popular prelate ; 
and the writer cannot refrain from saying with what 
delight, but a few months before that great man died, he 
saw, by the enthusiastic reception which the archbishop 
met, rising to make a short speech at a public meeting 
in Dublin of three thousand people, that justice was 
done him at last. He had found the place which was 
his due. They knew the noble Swan they had got, and 
knew that the honor he derived from the archiepiscopal 
throne was as a sand-grain when compared with the 
honor which he reflected on it. Yet he found the time 
hard to bear, when he was undervalued because he was 
too good ; when men vilified him because they could not 
understand him. " I have tried to look as if I did not feel 
it," he said ; " but it has shortened my life." Whereas 
our friend Carper, who for ten years past has held an 
eminent place for which he is about as fit as a cow, and 
which he has made ridiculous through his incompetence, 
— the wrong man in the wrong place, if such a thing 
ever was, — is entirely pleased with himself, and will 
never have his life shortened by any consideration of his 
outrageous incapacity. There were years of Arnold's 
life at Rugby during which he was an unappreciated 
man, just because he rose so high above the ordinary 
standard. If the sun were something new, and if you 
showed it for the first time to a company of blear-eyed 
men, they would doubtless say it was a most disagreeable 
object. And if there were no people of thoughtful hearts 
and of refined culture in the world, the author of Li 



THOUGHTS ON :\nSPLACED MEN. 45 

Memorlam would no doubt pass among mankind for a 
fool. There are people who, through a large part of 
their life, are above the liigh-water-mark of popular 
appreciation. Wordsworth was so. He needed " an 
audience fit "; and it for many a day was " few." The 
popular taste had to be educated into caring for him. It 
was as if you had commanded a band of children to 
drink bitter ale and to like it. Even Jeffrey could 
write, "This will never do!" And you miss peo- 
ple as completely by shooting over their heads as by 
hitting the ground a dozen yards on this side of 
them. A donkey, in all honesty, prefers thistles to 
pine-apple. Yet the poor pine-apple is ready to feel 
aororrieved. 

This misjudging of people, because they rise above the 
sphere of your judgment, begins early and lasts late. I 
have known a clever boy, under the authority of a 
tyrannical and uncultivated governor, w ho was savagely 
bullied and ignominiously ordered out of the room, be- 
cause he declared that he admired the Hartleap Well. 
His governor declared that he was a fool, a false pre- 
tender, a villain. His governor sketched his future 
career by declaring that he would be hanged in this 
world, and sent to perdition in the next. All this was 
because he possessed faculties which, his uncultivated 
t}Tant did not possess. It was as if a stone-deaf man 
should torture a lover of music because he ventured to 
maintain that there is such a thmg as sound. It was as 
if a man whose musical taste was educated up to the 
point of admiring the Ratcatchers Daughter should 
vihpend and suspend by hemp a human bemg who 
should declare there was something beyond that in 



46 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

Beethoven and Mendelssohn. And I believe that very 
often thoughtful little children are subjected to the 
great trial of being brouglit up in a house where they 
are utterly misunderstood by guardians and even by 
parents quite unequal to understanding them ; and this 
has a very souring effect on the little heart. There are 
boys and girls, living under their fathers' roof, who in 
their deepest thoughts are as thoroughly alone as if they 
dwelt at Tadmor in the Wilderness. There are children 
who would sooner go and tell their donkey what was 
most in their mind than they would tell it to their 
father or their mother. In some cases, the lack of 
power to understand or appreciate becomes still more 
marked as childhood advances to maturity. You may 
have known a man recognized by the world as a very 
wise man for expressing to the world the self-same 
views and opinions whose expression had caused him to 
be adjudged a fool at home. " Do you know, Charlotte 
has wiitten a book ; and it 's better than likely " : was all 
the father of its author had to say about Jane Eyre. 
What a picture of a searing, blighting home atmosphere ! 
You cannot read the story without thinking of ever- 
greens crisping up under a withering east wind of three 
weeks' duration. And I could point to a country in 
Africa where men, who would be recognized as great 
men elsewhere, are thought very little of, because tliere 
is hardly anybody who can appreciate them and their 
attainments. I have known there an accomplished 
schohir, who in the neighboring kingdom of Biafra would 
be made a clef rag (corresponding to our bishoj^), who, 
living where he does, when spoken of at all, is usually 
spoken of contemptuously as a dominie : corresponding 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 47 

to our schoolmaster or college tutor, but the undignified 
way of stating the fact. Such a man is a great Greek 
scholar ; but if he dwell among Africans, who know 
nothing earthly about Greek, and who care even less for 
it, what does it profit him? Alas, for that misplaced 
man ! Thought an Ugly Duck because he hves at 
Heliopolis ; while four hundred miles off, in the great 
University of Biafra, he would be hailed as a noble 
Swan by kindred Swans ! 

Almost the only order of educated men who have it 
not in their power to live among educated folk are the 
clergy. Almost all other cultivated men may choose 
for their daily companions people like themselves. But 
in the Church, you have doubtless known innumerable 
instances in which men of very high culture were set 
down in remote rural districts, where there was not a 
soul with whom they had a thought in common within 
a dozen miles. It is all right, of course, in that broader 
sense in which everything is so ; and doubtless the 
cure of souls, however rude and ignorant, is a work 
worthy of the best human heart and head that God ever 
made. Still it is sad to see a razor somewhat in- 
efficiently cutting a block, for which a great axe with 
a notched edge is the right thing. It is sad to see a 
cultivated, sensitive man in the kind of parish where 
I have several times seen such. You may be able to 
thuik of one, an elegant scholar, a profound theologian, 
a man of most refined taste, taken unhappily from the 
common-room of 'a college, and set down in a cold 
upland district, where there were no trees and where 
the wind almost invariably blew from the east ; among 
people with high cheek-bones and dried-up complexions, 



48 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

of radical politics and dissenting tendencies, dense in 
ignorance and stupidity, and impregnable in self-con- 
fidence and self-conceit, and just as capable of appre- 
ciating tlieir clergyman's graceful genius as an equal 
number of codfish would be. And what was a yet 
more melancholy sight than even the sight of the first 
inconsistency between the man and his place was the 
sight, of the way in which the man, year by year, de- 
generated till he gi'ew just the man for the place, and 
only a middling man for it. Yes, it was miserable to 
see how the Swan gradually degenerated into an Ugly 
Duck ; how his views got morbid, and his temper 
ungenial; how his accomplishments rusted, and his 
conversational powers died through utter lack of exer- 
cise; till after a good many years you beheld him a 
soured, wrong-headed, cantankerous, petty, disappointed 
man. For luck was against him ; and he had no prospect 
but that of remaining in the bleak upland parish, swept 
by the east wind, as long as he might live. And after a 
little while, he ceased entirely to go back to the university 
where he would have found fit associates ; and he grew 
so disagreeable that his old friends did not care to visit 
him, and listen to his moaning. Now, you cannot long 
keep much above what you are rated at. At least, you 
must have an iron constitution of mind if you do. I^ 
daresay sometimes in old days an honorable and goodf 
man was constrained by circumstances to become a' 
publican ; I mean, of course, a Jewish publican. He 
meant to be honest and kind, even in that unpopular 
sphere of life. But when all men shied him ; when his 
old friends cut him ; when he was made to feel, daily, 
that in the common estimation publicans and sinners 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 49 

ranked together ; I have no doubt earthly but he would 
sink to the average of his class. Or, as the sweetest 
wine becomes the sourest vinegar, he might not im- 
possibly prove a sinner above all the other publicans 
of the district. 

But not merely do ignorant and vulgar persons fail 
to appreciate at his true value a cultivated man : more 
than this; the fact of his cultivation may positively go 
to make vulgar and ignorant persons dislike and under- 
rate him. My friend Brow^n is a clergyman of the 
Scotch Church, and a man \vho has seen a little of the 
world. Like most educated Scotchmen now^-a-days, he 
speaks the English language, if not with an English 
accent, at least with an accent which is not disagreeably 
Scotch. He does not call a boat a bott ; nor a horse, 
a hoarrse ; nor philosophy, philozzophy ; nor a road, a 
rodd. He does not pronounce the word is as if it were 
spelt eez, nor talk of a lad of speerit. Still less does he 
talk of salvahtion, justificahtion, sanctificahtion, and the 
like. .He does not begin his church service by giving 
out either a sawm or a samm ; in which two disgusting 
forms I have sometimes known the word psalm dis- 
guised. Brown told me that once on a time he preached 
in the church of a remote country parish, where parson 
and people w^ere equally uncivilized. And after service 
the minister confided to him that he did not tliink the 
congregation could have liked his sermon. " Ye see," 
said the minister, " thawt's no the style o' langidge 
they 're used wi' ! " My friend replied, not without 
asperity, that he trusted it was not. But I could see, 
wdien he told me the story, that he did not quite like to 
be an Ugly Duck ; that it irked him to think that, in 

3 D 



50 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

fact, some vulgar boor with a different style o' langidge 
would have been much more acceptable to the people 
of Muffburgh. I am very happy to believe that such 
parishes as Muffburgh are becoming few ; and that a 
scholar and a gentleman will rarely indeed find that he 
had better, for immediate popularity, have been a clod- 
liopper and an ignoramus. You have heard, no doubt, 
how a dissenting preacher in England demolished the 
parish clergyman in a discourse against worldly learn- 
ing. The clergyman, newly come, was an eminent 
scholar. " Do ye think Powle knew Greek ? " said his 
opponent, perspiring all over. And the people saw how 
useless, and indeed prejudicial, was the knowledge of 
that heathen tongue. 

And this reminds me that it will certainly make a 
man an Ugly Duck to be, in knowledge or learning, in 
advance of the people among whom he lives. A very 
wise man, if he lives among people who are all fools, 
may find it expedient, like Brutus, to pass for a fool too. 
And if he knows two things or three which they don't 
know, he had better keep his information to himself. 
Even the possession of a single exclusive piece of knowl- 
edge may be a dangerous thing. Long ago, in an an- 
cient university near the source of the Nile, the profes- 
sors of divinity regarded not the quantity of Greek or 
Latin words. The length of the vow^els they decided in 
each case according to the idea of the moment. And 
their pronunciation of Scripture proper names, if it went 
upon any principle at all, went on a wrong one. A 
youthful student, named McLamroch, was reading an 
essay in the class of one of these respectable but ante- 
diluvian professors ; and coming to the word Thessa- 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 51 

lonica, he pronounced it, as all mortals do, with the 
accent on the last syllable but one, and giving the vowel 
as long. " Say Thessaloamca," said the venerable pro- 
fessor, with emphasis. '• I think, doctissime professor ^^ 
(for all professors in that university were most learned 
by courtesy,) " that Thessalonica is the right way," re- 
plied poor McLamroch. " I tell you it is wrong," shrilly 
shouted the good professor : " say Thessaloamca ! and 
let me tell you, Mr. McLamroch, you are most aboami- 
nably affectit ! " So poor McLamroch was put down. 
He was an Ugly Duck. And he found by sad experi- 
ence, that it is not safe to know more than your profes- 
sor. And I verily believe, that the solitary thing that 
McLamroch knew, and his professor did not know, was 
the way to pronounce Thessalonica. I have heard, in- 
deed, of a theological professor of that ancient day, who 
bitterly lamented the introduction of new fashions of 
pronouncing scriptural proper names. However, he 
said, he could stand all the rest ; but there were two 
renderings he would never give up but with life. These 
were Kapper-nawm, by which he meant Capernaum ; 
and Levvy-awthan, by which he meant Leviathan. And 
if you, my leai-ned friend, had been a student under that 
good man, and had pronounced these words as scholars 
and all others do, you would have found yourself no 
better than an Ugly Duck, and a fearfully misplaced 
man. 

A torrent of wut^ sarcasm at new lights, and indigna- 
tion at people who were not content to pronounce words 
(wrong) like their fathers before them, would have made 
you sink through the floor. 

To be in advance of your fellow-mortals in taste, too, 



52 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

is as dangerous as to be in advance of them in the pro- 
nunciation of Thessalonica. When Mr. Jones built his 
beautiful Gothic house in a district where all other 
houses belonged to no architectural school at all, all his 
neighbors laughed at him. A genial friend, in a letter 
in a newspaper, spoke of his peculiar taste, and called 
him the preposterous Jones. And it was a current joke 
in the neighborhood, when you met a friend, to say, 
" Have you seen Jones's house ? " You then held up 
both hands, or exclaimed, " Well, I never ! " Then 
your friend burst into a loud roar of laughter. In a 
severer mood, you would say, " That fellow ! Can't he 
build like his fathers before him ? Indeed he never 
had a grandfather. I remember how he was brought up 
by his aunt, that kept a cat's-meat shop in Muffburgh," 
and the like. All tliis evil came upon Jones, because he 
was a little in advance of his neighbors in taste. For 
in ten years, hardly a house round but had some steep 
gables, several bay-windows, and a little stained glass. 
Theu' owners esteemed them Gothic ; and in one sense, 
undoubtedly, some of them were Gotliic enough. In 
Scotland now people build handsome churches, and pay 
all due respect to ecclesiastical propriety. But it is not 
very long since a parish clergyman proposed to the au- 
thorities that a proper font should be provided for bap- 
tisms, because the only vessel heretofore used for that 
purpose was a crockery basin, used for washing hands ; 
and one of the authorities exclaimed indignantly, " We 
are not going to have any gewgaws in our church " : by 
gewgaws meaning a decorous font. What could be done 
with such a man ? Violently to knock his head against 
a wall would have been wrong ; for no man should be 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED MEN. 53 

visited with temporal penalties on account of his honest 
opinions. Yet any less decided treatment would have 
been of no avail. 

We ought all to be very thankful, if we are in our 
right place ; if we are set among people whom we suit, 
and who suit us; and among whom we need neither to 
practise a dishonest concealment of our views, nor to 
stand in the painful position of Ugly Ducks and Mis 
placed Men. Yes, a man may well be glad, if he is the 
square man in the square hole. For he mighfhave been 
a round man in a square hole ; and then he would have 
been unhappy in the hole, und the hole would have 
hated him. I know a place where a man who should 
say that he thought Catholic Emancipation common 
justice and common sense would be hooted down even 
yet ; would be told he was a villain, blinded by Satan. 
There is a locality, where morality indeed is very low, 
but where a valued friend of mine was held up to repro- 
bation as a dangerous and insidious man, because he 
declared in print that he did not think it sinful to take 
a quiet walk on Sunday. In that locality, one birth in 
every three is illegitimate; but it was pleasant and 
easy, by abuse of the rector of a London parish, and 
by abuse of others like him, to compound for the neglect 
of the duty of trying to break Hodge and Bill, Kate 
and Sally, of their evil ways. I know a place where 
you may find an intelligent man, out of a lunatic asylum 
too, who will tell you that to have an organ in church is 
to set up images and go back to Judaism. I have lately 
heard it seriously maintained that to make a decorous 
pause for a minute after service in church is over, and 



54 CONCERNING UGLY DUCKS: 

pray for God's blessing on the worship in which you 
have joined, is " contrary to reason and to Scripture ! " 
I know places where any one of the plainest canons of 
taste, being expressed by a man, would be taken as 
stamping him a fool. Now what would you do, my 
friend, if you found yourself set down among people 
with whom you were utterly out of sympathy ; whose 
first principles appeared to you the prejudices of prag- 
matic blockheads, and to whom your first principles ap- 
peared those of a silly and Ugly Duck? One would 
say, " If you don 't want to dwarf and distort your whole 
moral nature, get out of that situation." But then some 
poor fellows cannot. And then they must either take 
rank as Misplaced Men, or go through life hypocriti- 
cally pretending to share views which they despise. 
The latter alternative is inadmissible in any circum- 
stances. Be honest, whatever you do. Take your 
place boldly as an Ugly Duck, if God has appointed 
that to be your portion in this life. Doubtless, it will 
be a great trial. But you and I, friendly reader, set by 
Providence among people who understand us and whom 
we understand; among whom we may talk out our hon- 
est heart, and (let us hope) do so ; in talking to whom 
we don 't need to be on oiw guard, and every now and 
then to pull up, thinking to ourselves, " Now this sneak- 
ing fellow is lying on the catch for my saying some- 
thing he may go and repeat to my prejudice behind my 
back " ; how thankful we should be ! I declare, looking 
back on days that have been, in this very country, I 
cannot understand how manly, enlightened, and honest 
men lived then at all ! You must either have been a 
savage bigot, or a wretched sneak, or a martyr. The 



THOUGHTS ON MISPLACED I\IEN.- 55 

alternative is an awful one ; but let us trust, my friend, 
that if you and I had lived then, we should, by God's 
grace, have been equal to it. Yes, I humbly trust that 
if we had lived then, we should either have been 
burned, hanged, or shot. For the days have been in 
which that must have been the portion of an honest 
man, who thought for himself, and who would be dra- 
gooned by neither pope, prelate, nor presbyter. 

But now, having written myself into a heat of indig- 
nation, I think it inexpedient to write more. For it 
appears to me that to write or to read an essay like this 
ought always to be a relief and recreation. And those 
grave matters, which stir the heart too deeply, and tin- 
gle painfully through the nervous system, are best 
treated at other times, in other ways. Many men find 
it advisable to keep to themselves the subjects on which 
they feel most keenly. As for me, I dare not allow 
mj'self to think of certain evils of whose existence I 
know. Sometimes they drive one to some quiet spot, 
where you can walk up and down a little path with 
grass and evergreens on either hand, and try to forget 
the sin and misery you cannot mend : looking at the 
dappled shades of color on the grass ; taking hold of a 
little spray of holly, and poring upon its leaves ; stop- 
ping beside a great fir-tree, and diligently perusing the 
wrinkles of its bark. 

So we shut up. So we cave in. O the beauty of 
these simple plirases, so purely classic ! 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF CERTAIN 
GRAPES. 




ANY years since, on a sunshiny autumn day, 
a gentleman named Mr. Charles James Fox, 
a lawyer of eminence, was walking with his 
friend Mr. Mantrap through a vineyard near 
Melipotamus. A vineyard in that region of the earth is 
not the shabby field of what look like stunted goose- 
berry bushes which you may see on the Rhine. For 
trellised on high, from tree to tree, there hung the ripe 
clusters, rich and red. One cluster, of especial size and 
beauty, attracted the attention of Mr. Fox. He had in 
his hand a walking-stick (made of oak, varnished to a 
yellow hue), with a hook at its superior end. With this 
implement he sought to reach that cluster of grapes, 
with the view of appropriating it to his personal con- 
sumption, possibly upon the spot. But after repeated 
attempts, he found he could not in any way attain it. 
Upon this, Mr. Fox, a man of ready wit intellectually, 
but morally no more than an average human being, 
turned off the little disappointment by saying to his 
friend, " O, bother : I believe the grapes are as sour as 
the disposition of Mr. Snarling." The friends prose- 



SUDDEN SWEETENING OF CERTAIN GRAPES. 57 

cuted their walk ; but after they had proceeded a few 
miles, it occurred to Mr. Mantrap that Mr. Fox had 
depreciated the grapes because he could not reach them. 
Mr. Mantrap mentioned the occurrence to various ac- 
quaintances, and gradually it came to be that, in the 
circle of IMr. Fox's friends, sour grapes grew a pro- 
verbial phrase, signifying anything a human being would 
like to get, and, failing to get, cried down. 

These facts, now given to the public in an accurate 
fashion, were lately made the subject of a short narra- 
tive in a little volume of moral stories published by an 
individual whose name I do not mention. But by one 
of those misapprehensions which naturally occur when a 
story is conveyed by oral tradition, that gentleman (of 
whom I desire to speak with the utmost respect) repre- 
sented that the person who acted in the way briefly 
described was not Mr. C. J. Fox, the eminent lawyer, 
but the well-known inferior animal which is termed a 
fox. A moment's thought may show how impossible it 
is to receive such a representation. For it is extremely 
doubtful whether a fox would care to eat grapes, even 
if he could get a cluster of the very finest; while the 
notion that such an animal could express his ideas in 
articulate language is one which could not possibly be 
received, unless by illiterate persons, residing at a great 
distance from a university town. 

Should the reader have had any difficulty in grasping 
the full meaning of what has been said, it is requested 
that he should pause at this point, and read the preced- 
ing paragraphs a second or even a third time before 
proceeding further. 
3* 



58 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

Sometimes, in this world, people dishonestly say that 
the grapes they have failed to reach are sour, though 
knowing quite well that the grapes are sweet. In this 
case, these people desire to conceal their own disappoint- 
ment ; and (if possible) to make the value of the grapes 
less to such as may ultimately get them. Sometimes, 
in this world, when people have done their best to reach 
the grapes and failed, they come to honestly believe that 
the grapes are sour. They do, in good faith, cease to 
care for them, and resign their mind quite cheerfully to 
doing without them. But there is no reckoning up the 
odd ways in which the machinery of thought and feel- 
ing within human beings works ; and it is the purpose 
of the present dissertation to notice two of these. 

One is, that when you get the grapes, and specially 
if you get them too easily, the grapes are apt, if not 
exactly to grow sour, yet in great measure to lose their 
flavor. When you fairly get a thing, you do not care 
for it so much. Many people have lately been inter- 
ested and touched by a truthful representation in the 
pages of a very graceful, natural, and pure writer of 
fiction, whose pages (I have learned with some surprise) 
various worthy people think it wrong to read. That 
graceful and excellent writer shows us how a certain 
young man sought the love of a certain young wo- 
man, and how when that young man (not a noble or 
worthy man indeed) found the love of that poor girl 
given him so fully and unreservedly, he came not to 
care for it, and to think he might have done better. 
Lead him out and chastise him, my friend ; and having 
done so, look into your own heart, and see whether 
there be anything like him. If you be a wise person, 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 59 

}'0u may find reason severely to flagellate yourself. For 
it is the ungrateful and unworthy way of average human 
nature, to undervalue the blessings God gives us, if 
they come too cheaply and easily. Even Bruce, at the 
source of the Nile, thought to himself, " Is this all ? " 
and Gibbon, looking out upon the Lake of Geneva, 
after writing the last lines of the Decline and Fall, 
tells us how he thought and felt in like manner. 

Tliis, however, is not my special subject. My sub- 
ject is also connected with grapes ; but it is a different 
phenomenon to which I solicit the reader's rapt and 
delighted attention. It is, how suddenly certain grapes 
grow sweet, when you find you can get them. You 
had no estimate at all of these grapes before, or you 
even thought them sour. But suddenly you find the 
hook at the end of your walking-stick can reach them, 
suddenly you find you can get them, and now you 
judge of them quite differently. 

Many young women have thought, quite honestly, — 
and perhaps have said, in the injudicious way in wliich 
inexperienced people talk, — that they would not marry 
such and such a man upon any account. But some fine 
afternoon, the man in question asked them ; and to the 
astonishment of their friends (some of whom would have 
been glad to do the like themselves), the young ladies 
gladly accepted the human being, held in such unfavor- 
able estimation before. It just made all the difference, 
to find that the thing could be got. They began, all at 
once, to have quite a different estimate of the man ; to 
think of him and of his qualifications in quite a different 
way. The grapes suddenly grew sweet ; and instead 
of being contumeliously cast into the ditch, they were 
eaten wnth considerable satisfaction. 



60 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

Even so have young clergymen, fresh from the uni- 
versity, thought that they would not on any account 
take such a small living or such a shabby church ; and 
in a little while been very thankful to get one not so 
good. And I do not mean at present, in the case of 
either the young women or the young preachers, that 
they learn humbler ideas of themselves as time goes on, 
and come to lowlier expectations. That^ of course, is 
true ; but my present assertion is, that in truth when 
the thing is put within their reach, they come to think 
more highly of it ; they come to see all its advantages 
and merits, they are not merely resigned to take it, — 
they are glad to get it. Many a man is now in a place 
in life, and very content and thankful to be there, 
which he would have repudiated the notion of his ac- 
cepting very shortly before he accepted it with thank- 
fulness. 

The truth is, that if you look carefully, and look for 
some length of time, into the character of almost any- 
thing that is not positively bad, you will see a great deal 
of good about it. Friends in my own calling, do you 
not remember how, in your student days, you used to 
look at the shabby churches of our native land, where 
shabby churches are (alas !) the rule, and decorous ones 
the exception, and how you wondered then how their 
incumbents could stand them ? You thought how much 
it would add to the difficulty of conducting public worship 
wortliily to be obliged to do it under the cross-influence 
of a dirty, dilapidated barn, with a mass of rickety pews, 
where every arrangement would jar distressingly upon 
the whole nervous system of every man with a vestige 
of taste. You remember how your heart sunk as you 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 61 

looked at the vile wagon-roofed meeting-house in a 
dirty village street, with no churchyard at all round it ; 
or with the mangy, weedy, miserable-looking pound 
which even twenty years since was in many places 
thought good enough for the solemn sleep of the re- 
deemed body, still united to the Saviour. And you 
remember how earnestly you hoped that you might be 
favored so highly as to attain a parish where the church 
was a building at least decent, and if possible fairly 
ecclesiastical. And yet it is extremely likely you got a 
remarkably shabby church for your first one ; and it is in 
the highest degree probable that in a little you got quite 
interested in it, and thought it really very good. Of 
course, when my friend IMr. Snarling reads this, he will 
exclaim, What, is not the clergyman's work so weighty 
that it ought not to matter to him in the least what the 
mere outward building is like ? Is not the spiritual 
church the great thing ? may not God be worshipped in 
the humblest place as heartily as in the noblest ? And 
I reply to that candid person, who never misrepresented 
any one, and who never said a good word of any one, — 
Yes, my acquaintance, I remember all that. But still I 
hold that little vexatious external circumstances have a 
great eifect in producing a feeling of irritation the re- 
verse of devotional ; and I believe that we poor crea- 
tures, with our wandering thoughts and our cold hearts, 
are much more likely to worship in spirit, if we are kept 
free from such unfriendly influences, and if our worship 
be surrounded by all the outward decency and solemnity 
which are attainable. Give us a decorous building, I 
don't ask for a grand one ; give us quietude and order 
in all its arrangements ; give us church music that 



62 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

soothes and cheers, and brings us fresh heart ; give us 
an assemblage of seemingly devout worshippers. And 
these things being present, I do not hesitate to say that 
the average vrorshipper will be far more likely to offer 
true spiritual worship than in places to which I could 
easily point, where the discreditable building and the 
slovenly service are an offence and a mortification to 
every one with any sense of what is fit. 

This, however, is by the bye. I could say much more 
on the subject. But I remember, thankfully, that it is a 
subject on which all educated persons now think alike, 
everywhere. It did not use to be so, once. 

But not merely as regards churches, but as regards 
most other things, my principle, holds true, that if you 
look carefully and for some time into the qualifications 
of almost anything not positively bad, you will discern 
a great deal of good about it. Take a very ordinary- 
looking bunch of grapes ; take even a bunch of grapes 
which appears sour at a cursory glance : look at it care- 
fully for a good while, with the sense that it is your 
own ; and it will sweeten before your eyes. You pass 
a seedy little country house, looking like a fourth-rate 
farm-house : you think, and possibly say (if the man 
who lives in it be a friend of your own), that it is a 
wretched hole. The man who lives in it has very likely 
persuaded himself that it is a very handsome and at- 
tractive place. " What kind of manse have you got ? " 
said my friend Smith to a certain worthy clergyman. 
" Oh, it is a beautiful j^lace," was the prompt reply. It 
was in fact a dismal, weather-stained, whitewashed 
erection, without an architectural feature, with hardly 
a tree or an evergreen near it, standing on a bleak hiU- 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 63 

side. Smith heard the reply with great pleasure ; feel- 
ing thankful that by God's kind appointment a sensible 
man's own grapes seem sweet to him, which appear 
sour to everybody else, and to nobody sourer than to 
himself, before they became his own. The only wonder 
Smith felt was, that the good minister's reply had not 
been stronger. He was prepared to hear the good man 
say, "Oh, it is the most beautiful place in Scotland!" 
For people in general cannot express their appreciation 
of things, without introducing comparisons, and mdeed 
superlatives. If a man's window commands a fine view, 
he is not content to say that it does command a fine 
view : no, it commands " the finest view in Britain." 
If a human being has an attack of illness, about a 
hundredth part as bad as hundreds of people endure 
every day, that human being will probably be quite 
indignant, unless you recognize it as a fact, that nobody 
ever suffered so much before. Take an undistinguished 
volume from your shelves, read it carefully in your 
leisure hours for several evenings, and that undis- 
tinguished volume will become (in your estimation) an 
important one. My friend Smith, when he went to his 
couiitry parish, was obliged for several months to have 
his books in large packing-boxes, his study not being 
ready to receive them. He lived in a lonely rural spot, 
for many wintry weeks, all alone. It was a charming 
scene around, indeed ; warm with green ivy and yews 
and hollies through the brief daylight, but dreary and 
solitary through the long dark evenings to a man ac- 
customed to gas-lit streets. Soon after settling there, 
Smith chanced to draw forth from a box a certain 
volume, which had remained for months in his bookcase 



64 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

unnoted : one among many more, all very like. And 
on every Sunday evening of that solitary time, Smitii 
lead in that volume. He read with pleasure and profit. 
Ever since then, he has thought the book a valuable 
and excellent one. It is distinguished among his books 
as the Bishop of Anywhere is among five hundred other 
clergymen ; not that he is a whit wiser or better, but 
that he has been accidentally made more conspicuous. 
When Smith turns over its leaves now, the moaning 
of January winds through the pine wood comes back, 
and the brawl of a brook, winter-flooded. In brief, that 
cluster of grapes suddenly sweetened, because its merits 
were fairly weighed. If a thing be good at all, look at 
it and examine it, and it will seem better. 

Now, a thing you have no chance of getting, you 
never seriously weigh the merits of. When you receive 
a half offer of a place in life, it is quite fair for you to 
say, " Offer it fairly and I shall thmk of it." You 
cannot take the trouble of estimating it now. It is a 
laborious and anxious thing to make up your mind in 
such a case. You must consider and count up and 
weigh possibly a great number of circumstances. You 
do not choose to undergo that fatigue, perhaps for no 
result. And if you be in perplexity what to do, the 
balance may be turned just by the fact that the thing 
is attainable. Hence the truth of that true proverb, that 
Faint heart never won fair lady. If you are fond of 
IVIiss Smith, and wish to marry her, don't speculate 
at home whether or not she will have you. Go and ask 
her. Your asking may be the very thing that will decide 
her to have you. And you, patron or electors of some 
little country parish which is vacant, don't say, " We 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 65 

need never offer it to such and such an eminent preach- 
er ; he would never think of it ! " Go and trj him. 
Perhaps he may. Perhaps you may catch him just at 
a time when he is feeling weary and exhausted ; when 
he is growing old ; when your offer may recall with 
fresh beauty the green fields and trees amid which he 
once was young ; when he is sighing for a little rest. 
I could point out instances, more than one or two, in 
England and in Scotland, in which a bold offering of a 
bunch of grapes to a distinguished human being induced 
him to accept the grapes ; though you would have 
fancied beforehand that they would have been no 
temptation to him. I have known a man who (in a 
moral sense) refused a pine-apple, afterwards accept 
a turnip, and like it. AYe have all heai'd of a good man 
who might have lived in a palace, holding a position 
of great rank and gain, and of very easy duty, who put 
that golden cluster of grapes aside, and by his own free 
choice went to a place of hard work and little fame or 
profit, to remain there one of the happiest as well as one 
of the noblest and most useful of humankind ! And 
the only way in which I can account for various mar- 
riages is by supposing that the grapes suddenly grew 
irresistibly sweet, just when it appeared that they could 
be had. You may have known a fair young girl quite 
willingly and happily marry a good old creature, whom 
you would have said a priori she was quite sure to 
refuse. But when the old creature made offer of his 
faded self (and his unfaded possessions), the whole thing 
offered acquired a sudden value and beauty. He might 
be an odd stick ; but then his estate had most beautiful 
timber. Intellectually and morally he might be inferior 



66 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

or even deficient ; but then his three per cents formed 
a positive quantity of enormous amount. The whole 
thing offered had to be regarded as one bunch of grapes. 
And if some of the grapes were sour and shrivelled, a 
greater number of them were plump and juicy. 

Nobody who reads this page really knows whether he 
would like to be lord chancellor or to live in a house like 
Windsor Castle. The writer has not the faintest idea 
whether he would like to be Archbishop of Canterbury. 
We never even ourselves to such tilings as these. We 
don't seriously consider whether the grapes are sweet or 
sour, which there is not the faintest possibility of our 
ever reaching. When Mr. Disraeli (as he himself said 
in Parliament) " would have been very thankful for 
some small place," he had never lifted his eyes to the 
leadership of a certain great political party. Of that 
lofty cluster he had no estimate then ; but the modest 
little bunch of twelve hundred a-year seemed attainable, 
and so seemed sweet. But he was a great man when he 
said " I am very glad now I did not get it ! " He was 
destined to somethin^^ bisjorer and loftier. And when 
that greater position at last loomed in view, and became 
possible, became likely, — we can well believe that the 
great orator began to estimate it ; and that it became an 
object of honorable ambition when it was very near, and 
was all but grasped. When the prize is within reach, it 
becomes precious. When the Atlantic cable was being 
laid, you can think how precious it would seem when the 
vessels which were laying it had got within a mile or 
tw^o of land. Yes, success, just within our grasp, grows 
inestimably valuable. The cluster of grapes, long striven 
after, and now at length just got hold of, — how sweet 
it seems ! 



CERTAIN GRAPES. .67 

My friend Mr. Brown had often remarked to me, " If 
ever there was a hideous erection on the face of the 
earth, it is that St. Sophia's Church ; and I don't know 
a man less to be envied than the incumbent of so labori- 
ous and troublesome a parish." Brown and I were 
sitting on the wall of his beautiful churchyard in the 
country one fine summer day, when he made this re- 
mark, adding, " How much happier a life we have here 
in this pure air and among these sweet fields " (and in- 
deed the fragrance of the clover was very delightful 
that day), "and with our kindly, well-behaved country 
people ! " I need hardly mention, that Mr. Brown shortly 
afterwards succeeded to the vacant charge of St. So- 
phia's, a huge church in a great city. He was offered 
it in a kind way ; saw its claims and advantages in a 
new light ; accepted it, and is very happy in it. And 
recently he recalled to my memory his former estimate 
of it, and said how mistaken it was. He even added, 
that, although the architecture of St. Sophia's was not 
the purest Gothic (it is in fact not Gothic at all), still 
there is a simple grandeur about it, which produces a 
great effect upon the mind when you grow accustomed 
to it. " I used to laugh," he said, " at poor old Dr. Log 
when he declared it was the finest church in Britain 
but, do you know, some of its proportions are really un- 
rivalled. Here, for instance, look at that arch " ; — and 
then he went on at considerable length. The truth was, 
that the grapes had suddenly sweetened. The position 
never thought of, or thought of only as quite unattainable, 
was a very different thing now. 

I do not for a moment suppose any insincerity on the 
part of my friend. He quite sincerely esteemed the 



68 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

grapes as sour, when they hung beyond his reach. He 
quite sincerely esteemed them as sweet, when he came 
to know them better. But, as a general rule, whenever 
any man or woman undervalues and despises something 
which average human nature prizes and enjoys, we may 
say that if the grapes are fairly put within reach, they 
would suddenly and greatly sweeten. I speak. of aver- 
age human nature. There are exceptional cases. There 
is a great and good man who did not choose to be a 
bishop, who did not choose to be an archbishop. The 
test is, that he was offered these places and refused 
them. But there are a great many men, who could quite 
honestly say that they don't want to be bishops or arch- 
bishops. But then they have not been tried ; and there 
are some that I should not like to try. I believe the 
lawn would brighten into effulgence, when it was offered. 
The opportunity of usefulness would appear so great, 
that it could not in conscience be refused. The grapes, 
being within reach, would grow so sweet, that those 
good men would forget their old professions, and (in 
the words of Lord Castlereagh) turn their backs upon 
themselves. 

Perhaps you have known a refined young lady of 
thirty-nine years, who looked with disdain at her young- 
er female friends when they got married. She wondered 
at their weakness in getting spoony about any man, and 
despised their flutter of interest in the immediate pros- 
pect of the wedding-day and all its little arrangements. 
The whole thing — trousseau, cards, favors, cake — was 
contemptible. Perhaps you have known such a mature 
young lady get married herself at last, and evince a 
pride and an exhilaration in the prospect such as are 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 69 

rarely seen. It was delightful to witness the maidenly 
airs of the individual to whom the bunch of grapes had 
finally become attainable ; the enthusiastic affection she 
testified towards the romantic hero (weighing sixteen 
stone) to whom she had given her young affections ; the 
anguish of perplexity as to the material and fashion of 
the wedding-dress ; in short, the sudden sweetening of 
the grapes which had previously been so remarkably 
sour. There is nothing here to laugh at : it is a benefi- 
cent providential arrangement. In all walks of life you 
may have remarked the same. You may have known a 
hard-featured and well-principled servant, who, having 
no admirer, gave herself out as a man-hater, and be- 
lieved herself to be one. But some one turning up who 
(let us hope) admired and appreciated her real excel- 
lence, that admirable young woman grew quite tremen- 
dous : first, in her pride and exultation that she had a 
beau ; and secondly, in her admiration and fondness for 
him. Yes ; turn out human nature with a pitch fork ; 
and it will come back again. 

Perhaps you have known a wealthy old gentleman, 
living quietly somewhere in the city (let the word be 
understood in its cockney sense), and going into no so- 
ciety whatever, who frequently professed to despise the 
vanities to which other folk attach importance. He 
utterly contemned such things as a fine house, a fashion- 
able neighborhood, titled acquaintances, and the like ; 
and he did it all quite sincerely. But nature had her 
way at last. That wealthy gentleman bought a house 
in an aristocratic West End square. His elation at 
finding himself there was pleasing, yet a little irritating. 
He could not refrain from telling everyone that he lived 



70 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

there. Occasionally he would cut short a conversation 
with a city acquaintance, by stating that he " must be 
home to dinner at half past seven in Berkeley Square." 
He speedily informed himself of the precise social stand- 
ing of every inhabitant of that handsome quadrangle ; 
and would even produce the " Court Guide, " and tell an 
occasional visitor about the rank and connections of 
each name in the square. The delight with which he 
beheld a peer at his dinner-table may be conceived but 
not described. The grapes, in facft, had in all sincerity 
been esteemed as sour till he got possession of them. 
Then, all of a sudden, they became inconceivably sweet. 
So you may have beheld a plain, respectable man, who 
had made a considerable fortune in the oil trade, buy a 
property in the country and settle there. "I want noth- 
ing to do with your stuck-up gentry," said that respecta- 
ble man. "I shall keep by my old friends Smith, 
Brown, and Robinson,* who were apprentices with old 
McOily along with me, forty years ago." But when 
the carriage of the neighboring baronet drove up to the 
worthy man's door to call, it and its inmates were 
received with enthusiasm. There was, after all, a 
refinement of manner and feeling about gentle blood, 
not possessed by Smith and the others ; and after a lit- 
tle intercourse with the family of the baronet, and with 
other similar families, poor Smith, Brown, and Robinson 
got so chilly a reception at the country house, and were 
so infuriated by the frequent mention and the high lau- 
dation of the landed families about (whom Smith and 
his friends did not know* at all), that these old acquain- 
tances quite dropped off"; and the good old oil-merchant 
was left to the enjoyment of the grapes, formerly so 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 71 

sour and now so sweet. It is all in human nature. 
You may have known a cultivated man, with a small 
income, living in a city of very rich and not remarkably 
cultivated men. You may have heard him speak with 
much contempt of mere vulgar wealth, and of certain 
neighbors who possessed it. And you felt how easily 
that cultivated man might be led to change his tune. I 
have witnessed a parallel case. Once upon a time, the 
writer was walking along a certain country road, a 
walk of nine miles. He overtook a little boy walking 
along manfully by himself, — a little fellow of seven 
years old. The two wayfarers proceeded together for 
several miles, conversing of various subjects. It ap- 
peared, in the course of conversation, that the little boy, 
whose parents are very poor, never had any pocket- 
money. I don 't believe he ever had a penny to spend 
in all his life. He stated that he did not care for 
money, nor for the good things (in a child's sense of 
that phrase) which might be bought w^ith it. And part- 
ing from the little man, I could not but tip him a shil- 
hng. Every human being who will ever read this page 
would of course have done the same. It was his very 
fii'st shilling. He tried to receive it with philosophic 
composure, as if he did not care a bit about it. But he 
tried with little success. It was easy to see how differ- 
ent a thing a shilHng had suddenly growTi. The grapes 
had all at once sweetened. 

But it is the same way everywhere. An author 
without popular estimation thinks he can do quite well 
without it : he does not care for it. " The world knows 
nothing of its greatest men " ; nor, let us add, of its best. 
Yet popular favor proves very pleasant, when it comes 



72 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

at last. So a barrister without briefs does not want 
them or value them, till they come. So with the school- 
boy who does not care for prizes ; so with the student 
at college whose prize essays fail, through the incompe- 
tence of the judges. So (I fear) with the very intel- 
lectual preacher who would rather have his church 
empty than full, and who (at present) thinks that only 
the stupid and blinded are likely to attend a church 
where all the seats are occupied. I have kno^vn clever 
young fellows, more than two or three, who at a very 
early age had outgrown all ambition ; men who had in 
them the makings of great things, but by free choice 
took to a quiet and unnoted life ; men whose university 
standing had been unrivalled, but who instead of aiming 
at like eminence afterwards, took to gardening, to ever- 
greens and grass and trees ; to contented walks through 
winter fields ; to preaching to fifty rustic laborers ; to 
reading black-letter books in chambers at the Temple, 
instead of trying for the Great Seal ; quite happy, and 
quite sincere in thinking and saying they did not care 
for more eminent places. But at length, perhaps, suc- 
cess and eminence come, and they are very glad and 
pleased. Their views of these things are quite changed. 
They see that they can be more useful than they are. 
They feel that there was a good deal of indolent self- 
indulgence in the life they had been leading; that' 
there is more in this life than to practise a refined 
Epicureanism, — at least while strength and spirits 
suffice for more. The day may come, when these 
shall be. worn out, and then the old thing will again 
be pleasant. 

Let us hear the sum of the whole matter. If there 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 73 

be any thing in this world which is in its nature agree- 
able to average humanity, yet which you think sour, 
the likelihood is, that, if you got it, it would grow sweet. 
You cannot finally turn out nature. Though you may 
mow it down very tightly, it will grow again, as grass 
does in the like contingency. And if there be in you 
evil and unworthy tendencies, which by God's grace 
you have resolved to extirpate, you must keep a con- 
stant eye upon them. You must knock them on the 
head not once for all, but daily and hourly. 

There are things, perhaps, which you know you would 
like so much, yet which are so unattainable, that you 
wUl not allow yourself to think of them. That way lies 
your safety. If you allowed yourself to dwell upon them, 
and upon their pleasures and advantages, you would grow 
discontented with what you have. So, though you can- 
not help sometimes casting a hasty glance at the clus- 
ter of grapes, hanging high, which you would like, 
but which you will never have, yet don't look long at 
it. Don't sit down and contemplate it for a good while 
from various points of view, and think how much you 
would like it. That will only make you unhappy. And 
if you have known this world long, then you know tliis 
about it, that the thing you would like best is just the 
last you are ever likely to get. But of this I shall say 
no more. I said somethmg like it once before, and got 
a shower of lono; letters controvertingr it. 

If a young fellow fails in his profession, and then say 
he did not want to succeed, let us believe him. He is 
entitled to this. We do him, in most cases, no more 
than justice. The grapes have indeed grown sour, and 
it is a kind appointment of Providence that it is so. 

4 



74 OF THE SUDDEN SWEETENING OF 

But if success sliould come yet, you will find tliem 
sweeten again surprisingly. 

In writing upon this subject, I have been led to think 
of many things, and to think of many old acquaintances. 
Not very cheerfully did the writer trace out the first 
page, still less so the last. How sadly short has many a 
one, of whom we expected great things, fallen of those 
expectations! Is there one of the clever boys and 
thoughtful lads that has done as much as we looked 
for ? Not one. 

The great thing, of course, that resigns one to this, 
and to anything else, is the firm belief that God orders 
all. "It had pleased God to form poor Ned, A 
thing of idiot mind," wrote Southey. There the mat- 
ter is settled. We have not a word more to say. " I 
was dumb ; I opened not my mouth : because Tnou 
didst it !" 

We have all smiled at the fable of ^sop, of which 
the writer has given you the accurate version, and smiled 
at many manifestations we have seen in life showing its 
truth, and showing us how human nature, age after age, 
abides the self-same thing. I believe it is one of the 
most beneficent arrangements of God's providential gov- 
ernment, that the grapes we cannot reach grow sour. 
But for that, this would be a world of turned heads and 
broken hearts. Wlio has got the purple clusters he in 
his childhood thought to get? Yet who (if a sensible 
mortal) cares ? You were to have been a laurelled 
hero, — you are in fact a half-pay captain, glad to be 
made adjutant of a mUitia regiment. You were to have 



CERTAIN GRAPES. 75 

been Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, — you are, in 
fact, parish minister of Drumsleekie, with a smoky 
manse, and heritors who oppose the augmentation of 
your living. You were to have lived in a grand castle, 
possibly built of alternate blocks of gold and silver, — 
you live, in fact, in a plain house in a street, and find it 
hard enough to pay the Christmas bills. And you were 
to have been buried, at last, in Westminster Abbey, — 
while in fact you won't. But the beauty has faded off 
the things never to be attained, and the humble grapes 
you could reach have sweetened ; and you are content. 
Yet there are grapes which, if submitted to your close 
inspection, would seem so sweet that in comparison with 
them those you have would seem very insipid ; so you 
may be glad you will never see those grapes too near 
nor too long. 




CHAPTER V. 



CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF HUMAN BEINGS. 




HE other day, talking with my friend Smith, 
I incidentally said something which implied 
that a certain individual, who may be de- 
noted as Mr. X, was a distinguished and in- 
fluential man. " Nonsense ! " was Smith's prompt reply. 
" I saw Mr. X," continued Smith, " at a public meeting 
yesterday. He is a gorilla, — a yahoo. He is a dirty 
and ugly party. I heard him make a speech. He has 
a horribly vulgar accent, and an awkward, cubbish man- 
ner. In short, he is not a gentleman, nor the least like 
one ! " 

And having said this, my friend Smith thought he 
had finally disposed of X. 

But I replied, " I grant all that. All you have said 
about X is true. But still I say he is a distinguished 
and influential man, a very able man, — almost a great 
man." 

Smith was not convinced. He departed. I fear I 
have gone down in his estimation. I have not seen him 
since. Perhaps he does not want to see me. I don't 
care. 



CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF HUMAN BEINGS. 77 

But my friend Smith's observations have made me 
think a good deal of a tendency which is in human 
nature. It is very natural, if we find a man grossly 
deficient in something about which we are able to judge, 
— and perhaps in the thing about which we are able 
best to judge, — to conclude that he must be all bad. 
In the judgment of many, it is quite enough to condemn 
a man, to show that he is a low fellow, with an extremely 
vulgar accent. We forget how much good may go with 
these evil things ; good more than enough to outweigh 
all these and more. There is great difficulty in bringing 
men heartily to admit the great principle which may be 
expressed in the familiar words, — Foe Better, for 
Worse. There is great difficulty in bringing men 
really to see that excellent qualities may coexist with 
grave faults ; and that a man, with very glaring defects, 
may have so many great and good qualities, as serve to 
make him a good and eminent man, upon the balance 
of the whole account. Though you can show that A 
owes a hundred thousand pounds, this does not certainly 
show that A is a poor man. Possibly A may possess 
five hundred thousand pounds, and so the balance may 
be greatly in his favor. 

We all need to be reminded of this. It is very plain, 
but it is just very plain things that most of us practically 
forget. There are many folk who instantly, on discover- 
ing that A owes the hundred thousand pounds, proceed to 
declare him a bankrupt without further inquiry. Pos- 
sibly the debt A owes is constantly and strongly pressed 
on your attention, while it costs some investigation to be 
assured of the large capital he possesses. There is one 
debt in particular which, if we find owed by any man, it 



78 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

is hard to prevent ourselves declaring him a bankrupt 
without more investigation. Great vulgarity will com- 
monly stamp a man in the estimation of refined people, 
whatever his merits may be. That is a thing not to be 
got over. If a man be deficient by that hundred thou- 
sand pounds, all the gold of Ophir will (in the judgment 
of many) leave him poor. Once in my youth, I beheld 
an eminent preacher of a certain small Christian sect. 
I knew he was an eloquent orator, and that he was 
greatly and justly esteemed by the members of his own 
httle communion. I never heard him speak, and never 
beheld him save on that one occasion. But, sitting near 
him at a certain public meeting, I judged, from obvious 
indications, that he never had brushed his nails in his 
life. I remember well how disgusted I was, and how 
hastily I rushed to the conclusion that there was no good 
about him at all. Those territorial and immemorial 
nails hid from my youthful eyes all his excellent quali- 
ties. Of course, this was because I was very foolish and 
inexperienced. Men with worse defects may be great 
and good upon the whole. Or, to return to my analogy, 
no matter how great a man's debts may be, you must 
not conclude he is poor till you ascertain what his assets 
are. These may be so great as to leave him a rich man, 
though he owes a hundred thousand pounds. 

The principle which I desire to enforce is briefly this, 
— that men must be taken for better, for tvorse. There 
may be great drawbacks about a thing, and yet the thing 
may be good. Many people think, in a confused sort of 
way, that if you can mention several serious objections 
to taking a certain course, this shows you should not take 
that course. Not at all. Look to the other side of the 



HUMAN BEINGS. 79 

account. Possibly there are twice as many and twice 
as weighty objections to your not taking that course. 
There are things about your friend Smith that you don't 
like. They worry you. They point to a conclusion 
which might be expressed in the following proposi- 
tion : — 

Smith is bad. 

But if you desire to arrive at a just and sound esti- 
mate of Smith, your course will be to think of other 
things about Smith, which speak in a different strain. 
There are things about Smith you cannot help liking 
and respecting him for. And these point to a conclusion 
which a man of a comprehensive mind and of considerable 
knowledge of the language might express as follows : — 

Smith is good. 

And having before you the thmgs which may be 
said pro and con, it will be your duty first to count 
them, and then to weigh them. Counting alone will 
not suffice. For there may be six things which tell 
against Smith, and only three in his favor ; and yet 
the three may be justly entitled to be held as outweigh- 
ing the six. For instance, the six things counting 
against Smith may be these : — 

1. He has a red nose. 

2. He carries an extremely baggy cotton umbrella. 

3. He wears a shocking bad hat. ^ 

4. When you make any statement whatever in his 
hearing, he immediately begins to prove, by argument, 
that your statement cannot possibly be true. 

5. He says tremenduous when he means tremendous ; 
and talks of a prizenter w^hen he means a pre.centor. 



80 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

6. lie is constantly saying, " How very curious ! " 
also, " Goodness gracious ! " 

Whereas the three things making in Smith's favor 
may be these : — 

1 . He has the kindest of hearts. 

2. He has the clearest of heads. 

3. He is truth and honor impersonate. 

Now, if the account stand thus, the balance is un- 
questionably in Smith's favor. And it is so with 
everything else as well as with Smith. When you 
change to a new and better house, it is not all gain. It 
is gain on the wliole ; but there may be some resf)ects 
in which the old house was better than the new. And 
when you are getting on in life, it is not all going 
forward. In some respects it may be going back. It 
is an advance, on the whole, when the attorney-general 
becomes chancellor; yet there were pleasant things 
about the other way too, which the chancellor misses. 
It is, to most men, a gain on the whole to leave a 
beautiful rectory for a bishop's palace ; yet the change 
has its disadvantages too, and some pleasant things are 
lost. When Bishop Poore, who founded Salisbury 
Cathedral in the thirteenth century, left his magnificent 
church amid its sweet English scenery, to be bishop of 
the bleak northern diocese of Durham, he must have 
felt he was sacrificing a great deal. Yet to be Bishop 
of D^'ham in those days was to be a Prince of the 
Church, with a Prince's revenue ; and so Bishop Poore 
was, on the whole, content to go. I daresay in the 
thirteen years he lived at Durham before he died, he 
often wondered whether he had not done wrong. 

You will find men who are good classical scholars 



HUMAN BEI'NGS. 81 

ready to think it extinguishes a man wholly to show- 
that he is grossly ignorant of Latin and Greek. It is 
to be granted, no doubt, that as a classical training is an 
essential part of a liberal education, the lack of it is a 
symptomatic thing, like a man dropping his h's. He 
must be a vulgar man who talks about his Ouse and his 
Hoaks. And even so, to write about rem quomodo rem, 
as an eminent divine has done, raises awful suspicions. 
So it is with made estate puer. Still, we may build too 
much on such things. By a careful study of English 
models, a man may come to have a certain measure of 
classical taste and sensibility, though he could not con- 
strue a chance page of ^schylus or Thucydides, or even 
an ode of Horace. Yet you will never prevent many 
scholars from sometimes throwing in such a man's face 
his lack of Latin and Greek, as though that utterly 
wiped him out. I cannot but confess, indeed, that there 
is no single fact which goes more fatally to the question, 
whether a man can claim to be a really educated person, 
than the manifest want of scholarship ; all I say is, that 
too much may be made of even this. You know that a 
false quantity in a Latin quotation in a speech in 
Parliament can never be quite got over. It stamps the 
unfortunate individual who makes it. He may have 
many excellent qualities, many things of much more 
substantial worth than the power of writing alcaics ever 
so fluently, yet the 'suspicion of the want of the educa- 
tion of a gentleman will brand him. Yet Paley was a 
great man, though, when he went to Cambridge to 
take his degree of Doctor of Divinity, in the Concio ad 
Clerum he preached on that occasion, he pronounced 
profugus, profugus. A shower of epigrams followed. 
4* r 



82 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

Many a man, incomparably inferior to Paley on the 
whole, felt his superiority to Paley in the one matter 
of scholarship. Here was a joint in the great man's 
armor, at which it was easy to stick in a pin. Lockhart, 
too, was a very fair scholar, though you read at Abbots- 
ford, above the great dog's grave, certain lines which 
he wrote : — 

" Maidse marmorea dermis sub imagine, Maida, 
Ad januam Domini. Sit tibi terra levis ! " 

You will find it difficult, if you possess a fair acquaint- 
ance with the literature of your own country, to sup- 
press some little feelings of contempt for a man whose 
place in life should be warrant that he is an educated 
man, yet who is blankly ignorant of the worthy books in 
even his own language. Yet you may find highly re- 
spectable folk in that condition of ignorance ; — medical 
men in large practice ; country attorneys, growing yearly 
in wealth as their clients are growing poorer ; clergy- 
men, very diligent as parish priests, and not unversed in 
theology, if versed in little else. I have heard of a 
highly respectable divine, of no small standing as a 
preacher, who never had heard of the Spectator (I mean, 
of course, Steele and Addison's Spectator), at a period 
very near the close of his life. Ajid certain of his 
neighbors, who willingly laughed at that good man's 
ignorance, were but one degree ahead of him in literary 
information. They knew the Spectator, but they had 
never heard of Mr. Ruskin nor of Lord Macaulay. 
Still, they could do the work which it was their busi- 
ness to do, very reputably. And that is the great thing 
after all. 



HUMAN BEINGS. 83 

The truth is, that the tendency in a good scholar to 
despise a man devoid of scholarship, and the tendency in 
a well-read man to despise one who has read little or 
nothing besides the newspapers, is just a more dignified 
development of that impulse which is in all human 
beings to think A or B very ignorant, if A or B be un- 
acquainted with things which the human beings first 
named know well. I have heard a gardener say, with 
no small contempt, of a certain eminent scholar, " Ah, 
he knows nothing ; he does not know the difference be- 
tween an arbutus and a juniper." Possibly you have 
heard a sailor say of some indefinite person, " He knows 
nothing ; he does not know the foretop from the bin- 
nacle." I have heard an architect say of a certain man, 
to whom he had shown a certain noble church, " Why, 
the fellow did not know the chancel from the transept." 
And although the architect, being an educated man, did 
not add that the fellow knew nothing, that was certainly 
vaguely suggested by what he said. A musician tells 
you, as something which finally disposes of a fellow- 
creature, that he does not know the difference between 
a fugue and a madrigal. I remember somewhat despis- 
ing a distinguished classical professor, who read out a 
passage of IVIilton to be turned into heroic Latin verse. 
One line was, — 

" Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue " ; 

which the eminent man made an Alexandrine, by pro- 
nouncing fugue in two syllables, as fewgew. In fact, 
if you find a man decidedly below you in any one thing, 
if it were only in the knowledge how to pronounce 
fugue, you feel a strong impulse to despise him on the 



84 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

whole, and to judge that he stands below you alto- 
gether. 

Probably the most common error in the estimate of 
human beings, is one already named ; it is, to think 
meanly of a man if you find him plainly not a gentle- 
man. And I have present to my mind now a case 
which we have all probably witnessed ; namely, a set of 
empty-headed puppies, of distinguished aspect and lan- 
guid address, imperfectly able to spell the English lan- 
guage, and incapable of anything but the emptiest badi- 
nage in the respect of conversation, yet expressing their 
supreme contempt for a truly good man, who may have 
shown himself ignorant of the usages of society. You 
remember how Brummell mentioned it as a fact quite 
sufficient to extinguish a man, that he was "a person 
who would send his plate twice for soup." The judg- 
ment entertained by Brummell, or by any one like 
Brummell, is really not worth a moment's consideration. 
I think of the difficulty which good and sensible people 
feel, in believing the existence of sterling merit along 
with offensive ignorance and vulgarity. Yet a man 
whom no one could mistake for a gentleman may have 
great ability, great eloquence in his own way, great 
influence with the people, great weight even with culti- 
vated folk. I am not going to indicate localities or men- 
tion names, though I very easily could. No doubt, it is 
irritating to meet a member of the House of Commons, 
and to find him a vulgar vaporer. Yet, with all that, 
he may be & very fit man to be in Parliament ; and he 
may have considerable authority there, when he sticks 
to matters he can understand. And if refined and schol- 
arly folk think to set such a one aside, by mentioning 



HUMAN BEINGS. 85 

that he cannot read Thucydides, they will find them- 
selves mistaken. 

It is to many a very bitter pill to swallow, a very 
disagreeable thing to make up one's mind to, yet a thing 
to which the logic of facts compels every wise man to 
make up his mind, that in these days men whose fea- 
tures, manners, accent, entire ways of thinking and 
speaking, testify to their extreme vulgarity, have yet 
great influence with large masses of mankind. And it 
is quite vain for cultivated folk to think to ignore such. 
]Men grossly ignorant of history, of literature, of the 
classics, men who never brushed their nails, men who 
don't know when to wear a dress-coat and when a frock, 
may gain great popularity and standing with a great 
part of the population of Great Britain. Their vul- 
garity may form a high recommendation to the people 
with whom they are popular. It would be easy to 
point out places where anything like refinement or cul- 
tivation would be a positive hindrance to a man. Let 
not blocks be cut with razors. Let not coals be carried 
in gilded chariots. Rougher means will be more ser- 
viceable ; and if people of great cultivation say, " A set 
of vulgar fellows, not worth thinking of"; and refuse to 
see the work such men are doing, and to counteract it 
where its effects are evil; those cultivated people will 
some day regret it. I occasionally see a periodical pub- 
lication, containing the portraits of men who are esteemed 
eminent by a certain class of human beings. Most of 
those men are extremely ugly, and all of them extremely 
vulgar-looking. The natural impulse is to throw the 
coarse effigies aside, and to judge that such persons can 
do but little, either for good or ill. But if you inquire, 



86 CONCERNING THE ESTmATE OF 

you will find they are doing a great work, and wielding 
a great influence with a very large section of the popu- 
lation ; the work and influence being, in my judgment, of 
the most mischievous and perilous character. 

Then a truth very much to be remembered is, that 
the fact of a man's doing something conspicuously and 
extremely ill is no proof whatsoever that he is a stupid 
man. To many people it appears as if it were such a 
proof, simply because their ideas are so ill-defined. If 
a clergyman ride on horseback very badly, he had much 
better not do so in the presence of his humbler parish- 
ioners. The esteem in which they hold his sermons will 
be sensibly diminished by the recollection of having 
seen him roll ignominiously out of the saddle, and into 
the ditch. Still, in severe logic, it must be apparent 
that if the sermons be good in themselves, the bad 
horsemanship touches them not at all. It comes merely 
to this, — that if you take a man off his proper ground, 
he may make a very poor appearance ; while on his 
proj)er ground, he would make a very good one. A 
swan is extremely graceful in the water ; the same 
animal is extremely awkward on land. I have thought 
of a swan clumsily w^addling along on legs that cannot 
support its weight, when I have witnessed a great scholar 
trying to make a speech on a platform, and speaking 
miserably ill. The great scholar had left his own ele- 
ment, where he was graceful and at ease ; he had come 
to another, which did not by any means suit him. And 
while he floundered and stammered through his wretched 
little speech, I have beheld fluent empty -pates grinning 
with joy at the badness of his appearance. They had 
got the great scholar to race with them ; they in their 



HUMAN BEINGS. 87 

owu element, and he out of his. Thej had got him 
into a duel, giving them the choice of weapons ; and 
having beat him (as logicians say), secundum quid^ they 
plainly thought they had beat him simpliciter. You 
may have been amused at the artifices by which men, 
not good at anything but very fluent speaking, try to 
induce people, infinitely superior to them in every re- 
spect save that one, to make fools of themselves by 
miserable attempts at that one thing they could not do. 
The fluent speakers thought, in fact, to tempt the swan 
out of the water. The swan, if wise, will decline to 
come out of the water. 

I have beheld a famous anatomist carving a goose. 
He did it very ill. And the faith of the assembled 
company in his knowledge of anatomy was manifestly 
shaken. You may have seen a great and solemn phi- 
losopher seeking- to make himself agreeable to a knot 
of pretty young girls in a drawing-room. The great 
philosopher failed in his anxious endeavors, while a 
brainless cornet succeeded to perfection. Yet though 
the cornet eclipsed the philosopher in this one respect, 
it would be unjust to say that, on the whole, the cornet 
was the philosopher's superior. I have beheld a pious 
and amiable man playing at croquet. He played fright- 
fully ill. He made himself an object of universal deri- 
sion ; and he brought all his good quahties into grave 
suspicion, in the estimation of the gay young people 
with whom he played. Yes, let me recur to my great 
principle, — no clergyman should ever hazard his gen- 
eral usefulness by doing anything whatsoever signally 
ill in the presence of his parishioners. If he have not a 
good horse, and do not ride well, let him not ride at all. 



88 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

And if, living in Scotland, he be a curler ; or, living in 
England, join in the sports of his people ; though 
it be not desirable that he should display pre-eminent 
skill or agility, he ought to be a good player, — above 
the average. 

It is an interesting thing to see how habitually, in 
this world, excellence in one respect is balanced by in- 
feriority in another ; how needful it is, if you desire to 
form a fair judgment, to take men for better, for worse. 
I have oftentimes beheld the ecclesiastics of a certain 
renowned country assembled in their great council to 
legislate on church affairs. And, sitting mute on 
back benches, never dreaming of opening their lips, — 
pictures of helplessness and sheepishness, — I have be- 
held the best preachers of that renowned country: I 
am not going to mention their names. Meanwliile, 
sitting in prominent places, speaking frequently and 
lengthily, speaking in one or two cases with great pith 
and eloquence, I have beheld other preachers, whose 
power of emptying the pews of whatever church they 
might serve had been established beyond question by 
repeated trials. Yet, by tacit consent, these dreary ora- 
tors were admitted as the church's legislators ; and, in 
many cases, not unjustly. There is a grander church, 
in a larger country, in which the like balance of facul- 
ties may be perceived to exist. The greater clergymen 
of that church ai'e entitled bishops. Now, by the public 
at large, the bishops are regarded in the broad light of 
the chief men of the church ; that is, the greatest and 
most distinguished men. Next, the thing as regards 
which the general pubHc can best judge of a clergyman 
is his preaching. The general public, therefore, regard 



HUMAN BEINGS. 89 

the best preachers as the most eminent clergymen. But 
the qualities which go to make a good bishop are quite 
different from those which go to make a great preacher. 
Prudence, administrative tact, kindliness, wide sympa- 
thies, are desirable in a bishop. None of these things 
can be brought to the simple test of the goodness of a 
man's sermon. Indeed, the fiery qualities which go to 
make a great preacher do positively unfit a man for 
being a bishop. From all this comes an unhappy an- 
tagonism between the general way of thinking as to 
who should be bishops, and the way in which the people 
who select bishops think. And the general public is 
often scandalized by hearing that this man and the 
other, whom they never heard of, or whom they know 
to be a very dull preacher, is made a bishop ; while this 
or that man, who charms and edifies them by his admi- 
rable sermons, is passed over. For the tendency is in- 
veterate with ill-cultivated folk, to think that if a man 
be very good at anything he must be very good at every- 
thing. And with uneducated folk, the disposition is al- 
most ineradicable, to conclude that if you are very igno- 
rant on some subject they know, you know nothing ; and 
that if you do very ill something as to which they can 
judge, you can do nothing at all well. Pitt said of 
Lord Nelson, that the great admiral was the greatest 
fool he ever knew, when on shore. A less wise man 
than Pitt, judging Nelson a very great fool on shore, 
would have hurried to the conclusion that Nelson was a 
fool everywhere and altogether. And Nelson himself 
showed his wisdom, when informed of what Pitt had 
said. " Quite true," said Nelson ; " but I should soon 
prove Pitt a fool if I had him on board a ship." It 



90 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

may, indeed, be esteemed as certain that Pitt's strong 
common-sense would not have failed him, even at sea ; 
but when he was rolling about in deadly sea-sickness, 
and testifying twenty times in an hour his ignorance of 
nautical affairs, it may be esteemed as equally certain 
that the sailors would have regarded him as a fool. 

I have heard vulgar, self-sufficient people in a country 
parish relate with great delight instances of absence of 
mind and of lack of ordinary sense, on the part of a 
good old clergyman of great theological learning, who 
was for many years the incumbent of that parish. A 
thoughtful person would be interested in remarking 
instances in which an able and learned man proved 
himself little better than a baby. But it w^as not for 
the psychological interest that those people related their 
wretched little bits of ill-set gossip. It was for the pur- 
pose of conveying, by innuendo, that there was no good 
about that simple old man at all ; that he was, in fact, 
a fool simpUciter. But if you, learned reader, had taken 
that old man on his own ground, you would have discov- 
ered that he was anything but a fool. " "What 's the use 
of all your learning," his vulgar and ignorant wife was 
wont to say to him, " if you don't know how to ride on 
horseback, and how turnips should be sown after 
wheat ? " 

You may remember an interesting instance, in the 
Life of George Stephenson, of two great men supple- 
menting each the other's defects. George Stephenson 
was arguing a scientific point with a fluent talker who 
knew very little about the matter ; but though Stephen- 
son's knowledge of the subject was great, and his opin- 
ions sound, he was thoroughly reduced to silence. Ho 



HUMAN BEINGS. 91 

had no command of language or argument. He had a 
good case, but he did not know how to conduct it. But 
all this happened at a country-house where Sir "William 
FoUett was likewise staying. Follett saw that Stephen- 
son was right, and he was impatient of the triumph of 
the fluent talker. Follett, of course, had magnificent 
powers of argument, but he had no knowledge whatever 
of the matter under discussion. But, privately getting 
hold of Stephenson, Follett got Stephenson to coach 
him up in the facts of the case. Next day, the great 
advocate led the conversation once more to the disputed 
question ; and now Stephenson's knowledge and FoUett's 
logic combined smashed the fluent talker of yesterday 
to atoms. 

Themistocles, every one knows, could not fiddle, but 
he could make a little city a big one. Yet the people 
who distinctly saw he could not fiddle were many, while 
those who discerned his competence in the other direc- 
tion were few. So, it is not unlikely that many peo- 
ple despised him for his bad fiddling, failing to remark 
that it was not his vocation to fiddle. Goldsmith wrote 
The Vicar of Wakefield and The Good-natured Man ; 
yet he felt indignant at the admiration bestowed by a 
company of his acquaintances upon the agility of a mon- 
key ; and, starting up in anger and impatience, ex- 
claimed, " I could do all that myself. " I have heard 
of a very great logician and divine, who was dissatisfied 
that a trained gymnast should excel him in feats of 
strength, and who insisted on doing the gymnast's feats 
himself; and, strange to say, he actually did them. 
Wise men would not have thought the less of him 
though he had failed ; but it is certain that many aver- 



92 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

age peojDle thought the more of him because he suc- 
ceeded. 

There are single acts which may justly be held as 
symptomatic of a man's whole nature ; for, though done 
in a short time, they are the manifestation of ways of 
thinking and feeling which have lasted through a long 
time. To have written two or three malignant anony- 
mous letters may be regarded as branding a man finally. 
To have only once tried to stab a man in the back may 
justly raise some suspicion of a man's candor and hon- 
esty ever after. You know, my reader, that if A poi- 
sons only one fellow creature, the laws of our country 
esteem that single deed as so symptomatic of A 's whole 
character, that they found upon it the general conclusion 
that A is not a safe member of society ; and so, with all 
but universal approval, they hang A. Still the doing 
of one or two very malicious and dishonorable actions 
may not indicate that a man is wholly dishonorable and 
malicious. These may be no more than an outburst of 
the bad which is in every man, cleared off thus, as 
electricity is taken out of the atmosphere by a good 
thunder-storm. I am not sure what I ought, in fairness, 
to think of a certain individual, describing himself as a 
clergyman of the Church of England, who has formed 
an unfavorable opinion of the compositions of the pres- 
ent writer, and who, every now and then, sends me an 
anonymous letter. It is, indeed, a curious question, 
how a human being can deliberately sit down and spend 
a good deal of time in writing eight rather close pages 
of anonymous matter of an unfriendly, not to say abu- 
sive character, and then send it off to a man who is a 



i 



HUMAN BEINGS. 93 

total stranger. What are we to think of this individ- 
ual? Are we to think favorably of him as a clergy- 
man and as a gentleman ? He has sent me a good 
many letters ; and I shall give you some extracts from 
the last. For the sake of argument, let it be said that 
my name is Jones. I am a clergyman of the Estab- 
lished Church in a certain county. But my corre- 
spondent plainly thinks it a strong point to call me a 
Dissenter, which he does several times in each of his 
letters. Of course, he knows that I am not a Dis- 
senter ; but this mode of address seems to please him. 
I give you the passages from his last letter verbatim, 
only substituting Jones for another name, of no interest 
to anybody : — 

Rev. Jones (Dissenting Preacher) : — 

I have read your Sermons from curiosity. They ex- 
hibit your iuAdncible conceit, like all your other works. 
Your notion as to the resurrection of the old body is 
utterly exploded, except amongst such divines as Dr. 
Gumming (who is not eminent, as you assert), and simi- 
lar riff-raff. 

There is now-a-days no Sabbath. The Scotch, who 
talk of a " Sabbath," are fools and ignorant fanatics. I 
am glad to see that you, Jones, were well castigated by 
a London paper for lending your name to a hateful 
crusade of certain fanatics in Edinburgh (including the 
odious Guthrie), against opening the parks to the people 
on Sunday. I intend to visit Edinburgh or Glasgow 
some Sunday, and to walk about, as a clergyman, be- 
tween the services, with some little ostentation, in order 
to show my contempt of the local custom. Let any 



94 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

low Scotch Presbyterian lay hands on me at his peril ! 
Ah, Jones, you evidently dare not say your soul is your 
own in Scotland ! 

Neither Caird nor Gumming are men of first-rate 
ability. Gumming is a mere dunce, not even literate. 
How can you talk of understanding the works of Mr. 
Maurice ? Of course not : you are too low-minded and 
narrow-souled ! But do not dare to disparage such ex- 
alted merit. Say you are a fool, and blind, and we may 
excuse you. 

You are clearly unable to appreciate excellence of 
any kind. Your assertion, that the doctrines of the 
Ghurch, our Ghurch, are Galvinistic, is a false one. 
Calvinism is now confined to illiterate tinkers. Dissent- 
ers, Puritans, and low Scotch Presbyterians. 

Your constant use of the phrase, " My friends," in 
your sermons, is bad and affected. We are not your 
" friends " ; and you care nothing for your hearers, ex- 
cept to gain their applause ! 

I remain, Sir Jones, with no very great respect, 
Your obedient servant, 

P. A. 

P. S. — Poor A. K. IL B. Why not A. S. S. ! 

Now, my reader, how shall we estimate the man that 
wrote this ? Gan he be a gentleman ? Gan he be a 
clergyman ? I have received from liim a good many 
letters of the same kind, which I have destroyed, or I 
might have culled from them still more remarkable 
flowers of rhetoric. In a recent letter he drew a very 
unfavorable comparison between the present writer and 
the author of Friends in Goimcil. In that unfavorable 



HUMAN BEINGS. 95 

comparison I heartily concur ; but it may be satisfactory 
to Mr. P. A. to know that immediately after receiving 
his letter I was conversing with the author of Friends 
in Council, and that I read his letter to my revered 
friend. And I do not think Mr. P. A. would have been 
gratified if he had heard the opinion which the author 
of Friends in Council expressed of P. A. upon the 
strength of that one letter. Let us do P. A. justice. 
For a long time he sent his anonymous letters unpaid, 
and each of them cost me twopence. For some time 
past he has paid his jDOstages. Now this is an improve- 
ment. The next step in advance which remains for P. 
A. is to cease wholly from writing anonymous letters. 

Now to conclude : — 

There is great difficulty in estimating human beings ; 
that is, in placing them (in the racing sense) in your 
own mind. And the difficulty comes of this, that you 
have to take a conjunct view of a man's deservings and 
ill-deservings ; the man's merit is the resultant of all 
his qualities, good and bad. In a race the comparison 
is brought to the single point of speed, — or, more accu- 
rately speaking, to the test, which horse shall, on a given 
day, pass the winning-post first. Every one understands 
the issue ; and the prize goes on just the one considera- 
tion. Great confusion and difficulty would arise if 
other issues were brought in ; as for instance, if a man 
were permitted to say to the owner of the winner, 
" You have passed the post first, but then my horse has 
the longest tail, and, upon the strength of that fact, I 
claim the cup." Yet, in placing human beings (men- 
tally) for the race of life, the case is just so. You are 



96 CONCERNING THE ESTIMATE OF 

making up your mind, "Is this man eminent or ob- 
scure ? is he deserving or not ? is he good or bad ? " 
But there is no one issue to which you can rightly bring 
his merits. He may exhibit extraordinary skill and 
ability in doing some one thing ; but a host of little 
disturbing circumstances may come to perplex your 
judgment. Mr. Green was a good scholar and a clever 
fellow ; yet I have heard Mr. Brown say, " Green ! ah, 
' he's a beast ! Do* you know, he told me he always 
studies without shoes and stockings ! " And then there 
is a difficulty in saying what importance ought to be 
attached to those disturbing causes, as well as whether 
they exist or not. One man thinks a long tail a great 
beauty, another attaches no consequence to a long tail. 
One man concludes that Mr. Green is a beast because 
he studies without shoes or stockings; another holds 
that as an indiiFerent circumstance, not affecting his esti- 
mate of Green. I fear we can come to no more satis- 
factory conclusion than this, — that of Green, and of 
each human being, there are likely to be just as many 
different estimates as there are people who will take the 
trouble of forming an estimate of them at all. 

You will remark, I have been speaking of estimates, 
honestly formed and honestly expressed. No doubt we 
often hear and often read estimates of men, which esti- 
mates have been plainly disturbed by other forces. No 
wise man will attach much weight to the estimate of a 
successful man, which is expressed by a not very mag- 
nanimous man whom he has beaten. If A sends an article 
to a magazine, and has it rejected, he is not a competent 
judge of the merit of the articles which appear in that 
number in which he wished his to be. You would not 



HUMAN BEINGS. 97 

ask for a fair estimate of Miss Y's singing from a young 
lady who tries to sing as well and fails. You would not 
expect a very reliable estimate of a young barrister, get- 
ting into great practice, from poor Mr. Briefless, mortified 
at his own ill-success. You would not look for a very 
flattering estimate of Mr. Melvill or Bishop Wilberforce 
from a preacher who esteems himself as a great man, 
but who somehow gets only empty pews and bare walls 
to hear him preach. Sometimes, in such estimates, there 
are real envy and malice, as shown by intentional mis- 
representation and mere abuse. More frequently, we 
willingly believe, there is no intention to estimate un- 
fairly ; the bias against the man is strong, but it is not 
designed. A writer cut off from the staff of a periodical, 
though really an honest man, has been known to attack 
another writer retained on that staff. Let me say that, 
in such a case a very high-minded man would decline to 
express publicly any estimate, being aware that he could 
not help being somewhat biassed. 

Let this be a rule : — 

If we think highly of one who has beaten us, let us 
say out our estimate warmly and heartily. 

If we think ill of one who has beaten us, let us keep 
our estimate to ourselves. It is probably unjust ; and 
even if it be a just estimate, few men of experience 
will think it so. 



5=* 




CHAPTER VI. 



REMEMBRANCE. 




HALL I, because I have seen the subject 
which has been simmering in my mind for 
several past days treated beautifully by 
another hand, resolve not to touch that sub- 
ject, and to let my thoughts about it go ? No, I will 
not. 

It was a little disheartening, no doubt, when I looked 
yesterday at a certain magazine, to find w^hat I had 
designed to say said far better by somebody else. But 
then Dean Alford said it in graceful and touching verse : 
I aimed no higher than at homely prose. 

Sitting, my friend, by the evening fireside, — sitting in 
your easy chair, at rest, and looking at the warm light 
on the rosy face of your little boy or girl, sitting on the 
rug by you, — do you ever wonder what kind of remem- 
brance these little ones will have of you, if God spares 
them to grow old ? Look into the years to come : think 
of that smooth face, lined and roughened ; that curly 
hair, gray ; that expression, now so bright and luii)py, 
grown careworn and sad, and you long in your grave. 
Of course, your son will not have quite forgot you. He 



REMEMBRANCE. 99 

Tvill sometimes think and speak of his father who is 
gone. "What kind of remembrance will he have of jou ? 
Probably very dim and vague. 

You know for yourself, that "when you look at your 
little boy in the light of the fire, who is now a good 
deal bigger than in the days when he first was able to 
put a soft hand in yours and to walk by your side, you 
have but an indistinct remembrance of what he used to 
be then. Knowing how much you would come to value 
the remembrance of those days, you have done what 
you could to perpetuate it. As you turn over the 
leaves of your diary, you find recorded with care many 
of that little man's wonderful sayings ; though, being 
well aware that these are infinitely more interestmg to 
you than to other people, you have sufficient sense 
to keep them to yourself. There are those of your 
fellow-creatures to whom you would just as soon think 
of speaking about these things as you would think of 
speaking about them to a jackass. And you have aided 
your memory by yearly photographs, thankful that 
such invaluable memorials are now possible, and lament- 
ing bitterly that they came so late. Yet, with all this 
help, and though the years are very few, your remem- 
brance of the first summer that your little boy was able 
to run about on the grass in the green light of leaves, 
and to go with you to the stable-yard and look with 
admiration at the horse, and with alarm at the pig 
voraciously devouring its breakfast, is far less vivid 
and distinct than you would wish it to be. Taught by 
experience, you have striven with the efikcing power 
of time ; yet assuredly not with entire success. Yes, 
your little boy of three years old has faded somewhat 



100 RExMEMBRANCE. 

from your memory ; and you may discern in all this the 
way in which you will gradually fade from his. Never 
forgotten, if you have been the parent you ought to be, 
you will be remembered vaguely. And you think to 
yourself, in the restful evening, looking at the rosy face, 
Now, when he has grown old, how will he remember 
me ? I shall have been gone for many a day and year ; 
all my work, all my cares and troubles, will be over ; all 
those little things will be past and forgot, which went 
to make up my life, and about which nobody quite knew 
but myself. The table at which I write, the inkstand, 
all my little arrangements, will be swept aside. That 
little man will have come a long, long way since he 
saw me last. How will he think of me ? Will he some- 
times recall my voice, and the stories I told, and the 
races I used to run ? Will he sometimes say to a 
stranger, " That's his picture, not very like him " ; will 
he sometimes think to himself, " There is the corner 
where he used to sit ; I wonder where his chair is 
now?" 

Cowper, writing at the age of fifty-eight, says of his 
motlier : " She died when I had completed my sixth 
year, yet I remember her well. I remember too a mul- 
titude of maternal tendernesses which I received from 
her, and which have endeared her memory to me be- 
yond expression." For fifty-two years the over-sensi- 
tive poet had come on his earthly pilgrimage since the 
little boy of six last saw his mother's face. Of course, 
at that age, he could understand very little of what is 
meant by death ; and very little of that great truth, 
which Gray tells us he discovered for himself, and 
which very few people learn till they find it by experi- 



REMEMBRANCE. 101 

ence, that in this world a human being never can have 
more than one mother. Yet we can think of the poor 
little man, finding daily that no one cared for him now 
as he used to be cared for, finding that the kindest 
face he could remember was now seen no more. And 
doubtless there was a vague, overwhelming sorrow at 
his heart, which lay there unexpressed for half a cent- 
ury, till his mother's picture sent him by a relative 
touched the fount of feelmg, and inspired the words we 
all know : — 

"I heard the bell tolled on thy burial day; 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away j 
And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 

But was it such ? — It was. Where thou art gone, 
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
The parting word shall pass my lips no more! " 

Nobody likes the idea of being quite forgot. Yet 
sensible people have to make up their mind to it. And 
you do not care so much about being forgotten by those 
beyond your own family circle. But you shrink from 
the thought that your children may never sit down 
alone, and, in a kindly way, think for a little of you 
after you are dead. And all the little details and inter- 
ests which now make up your habitude of life seem so 
real, that there is a certain difficulty in bringing it home 
to one that they are all to go completely out, leaving no 
trace behind. Of course they must. Our little ways, 
my friend, will pass from this earth ; and you and I will 
be like the brave men who lived before Agamemnon. 
A clergyman who is doing his duty diligently does not 



102 REMEMBRANCE. 

like to think that when he goes he will be so soon for- 
gotten in his old 2:)arish and his old church. Bigger 
folk, no doubt, have the same feeling. A certain great 
man has been entirely successful in carrying out his 
purpose; which was, he said, to leave something so 
written that men should not easily let it die. But that 
which is nearest us touches us most. We sympathize 
most readily with little men. Perhaps you preached 
yesterday in your own church to a large congregation 
of Christian people. Perhaps they were very silent and 
attentive. Perhaps the music was very beautiful, and 
its heartmess touched your heart. The service was 
soon over; it may have seemed long to some. Then 
the great tide of life that had filled the church ebbed 
away, and left it to its week-day loneliness. The like 
happens each Sunday. And many years hence, after 
you are dead, some old people will say, Mr. Smith was 
minister of this parish for so many years. That is all. 
And looking back for eveij five or ten years, a common 
Sunday's service is as undistinguished in remembrance 
as a green leaf on a great beech-tree, now in June, or as 
a single flake in a thick fall of snow. 

Probably you have seen a picture by Mr. Noel Paton, 
called The Silver Cord Loosed. It is one of the most 
beautiful and touching of the pictures of that great j:)aint- 
er. I saw it the day before yesterday, not for the first 
or second time. People came into the place where it 
was exhibited, talking and laughing; but as they stood 
before !hat canvas, a hush fell on all. On a couch, 
there is a female figure lying dead. Death is unmis- 
takably there, but only in its beauty ; and beyond, 
through a great window, there is. a glorious sunset sky. 



REMEMBRANCE. 103 

" Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thj 
moon withdraw herself, for the Lord shall be thine ever- 
lasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be 
ended." Seated by the bed, there is a mourner, with 
hidden face, in his first Overwhelming grief. Looking 
at that picture in former days, I had thought how " at 
evening time there shall be light," but looking at it now, 
with the subject of this essay in my mind, I thought 
how that man, so crushed meanwhile, if the first grief 
do not kill him (and the greatest grief rarely kills the 
man of sound physical frame), would get over it, and 
after some years w^ould find it hard to revive the feelings 
and thoughts of this day. People in actual modern life 
are not attired in the picturesque fashion of the mourner 
in Mr. Noel Paton's picture, but it is because many can 
from their own experience tell what a human being in 
like circumstances would be feeling that this detail of 
the picture is so touching. And the saddest thing about 
it is not the present grief, it is the fact that the grief 
will so certainly fade and go. And no human power 
can prevent it. " The low beginnings of content " will 
force themselves into conscious existence, even in the 
heart that is most unwilling to recognize them. You 
will chide yourself that you are able so soon to get over 
that which you once fancied would darken all your after 
days. And all your eiForts will not bring back the first 
sorrow, nor recall the thoughts and the atmosphere of 
that time. When you w^ere a little boy, and a little 
brother pinched your arm so that a red mark was left, 
you hastened down-stairs to make your complaint to the 
proper authority. On your way down, fast as you went, 
you perceived that the red mark was fading out, and 



104 REMEMBRAl^CE. 

becoming invisible. And did you not secretly give the 
place another pinch to keep up the color till the injury 
should be exhibited ? Well, there are mourners who do 
just the like. I think I can see some traces of that in 
In Memoriam. In ■ sorrow that the wound is healing, 
you are ready to tear it open afresh. And by observing 
anniversaries, by going to places surrounded by sad 
associations, some human beings strive to keep up their 
feelings to the sensitive point of former days. But it 
will not do. The surface, often spurred, gets indurated ; 
sensation leaves it, and after a while, you might as well 
think to excite sensation in a piece of India rubber by 
pricking it with a pin, as think to waken any real feel- 
ing in the heart wdiich has indeed met a terrible wound, 
but whose vs^ound is cicatrized. All this is very sad to 
think of. Indeed, I confess to thinking it the very sor- 
est point about the average human being. Great grief 
may leave us, but it should not leave us the men w^e 
were. There are people in whose faces I always look 
with wonder, thinking of what they have come through, 
and of how little trace it has left. I have gone into a 
certain room, where everytliing recalled vividly to me 
one who was dead. Furniture, books, pictures, piano, 
how plainly they brought back the face of one far 
away! But the regular inmates of the house had no 
such feeling ; had it not, at least, in any painful degree. 
No doubt, they had felt it for a while, and outgrown it ; 
whereas to me it came fresh. And after a time it went 
from me too. 

You know how we linger on the words and looks of 
the dead after they are gone. It is our sorrowful pro- 
test against the power of Time, which we know is taking 



REMEMBRANCE. 105 

tliese things from us. We try to bring back the features 
and the tones ; and we are angry with ourselves that we 
cannot do so more clearly. " Such a day," we think, 
" we saw them last : so they looked : and such words 
they said." We do that about people for whom we did 
not especially care while they lived : a certain conse- 
cration is breathed about them now. But how much 
more as to those who did not need this to endear them ! 
You ought to know the lines of a true and beautiful 
poet about his little brother who died : — 

" And when at last he was*orne afar 
Frona the world's weary strife, 
How oft in thought did we again 
Live o'er his little life ! 

" His every look, his eveiy word, 
His very voice's tone, 
Came back to tis like things whose worth 
Is only prized when gone ! " 

I wish I could tell Mr. Hedderwick how many scores 
of times I repeated to myself that most touching poem 
in which these verses stand. But I know (for human 
nature is always the same) "ftiat, when the poet grew to 
middle age and more, those tones and looks that came 
so vividly back in the first days of bereavement would 
grow indistinct and faint. And now, when he sits by 
the fire at evening, or when he goes out for a solitary 
walk, and tries to recall his little brother's face, he will 
grieve to feel that it seems misty and far away. 

" I cannot see the features right, 

When on the gloom I strive to paint 
The face I knew ; the hues are faint, 
And mix with hollow masks of night." 

5* 



106 REMEMBRANCE. 

And you will remember how Mr. Hawthorne, with 
his sharp discernment of the Subtle phenomena of the 
mind, speaking in the name of one who recalled the 
form and aspect of a beautiful woman not seen for 
years, says something like this : When I shut my eyes, 
I see her yet, but a little wanner than when I saw her 
in fact. 

Yes ; and as time goes on, a great deal wanner. I 
have remarked that even when the outlines remain in 
our remembrance, the colors fade away. 

Thus true is it, that*as for the long absent and the 
long dead, their remembrance fails. Their faces, and 
the tones of their voice, grow dim. And sometimes we 
have all thought what a great thing it would be to be 
able at will to bring all these back w^ith the vividness 
of reality. What a great thing it would be if we could 
keep them on with us, clearly and vividly as we had 
them at the first! Wlien your young sister died, oh 
how distinctly you could hear, for many days, some 
chance sentence as spoken by her gentle voice ! When 
your little child was take%..how plainly you could feel, 
for a while, the fat little cheek laid against your own, as 
it was for the last time ! But there is no preciou3 pos- 
session we have which wears out so fast as the remem- 
brance of those who are gone. There never was but 
one case where that was not so. Let us remember it as 
we are told of it in the never-failing Record : there are 
not many kindlier words, even there : — 

" But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom 
the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all 
things, and bring all things to your remembrance, what- 
soever I have said unto you." 



REMEMBRANCE. 107 

So you see in that case the dear remembrance would 
never wear out but with life. The Blessed Spirit would 
bring back the words, the tones, the looks, of the Blessed 
Redeemer, as long as those lived who had heard and 
seen Him. He was to do other things, still more im- 
portant ; but you will probably feel what a wonderfully 
kindly and encouraging view it gives us of that Divine 
Person, to think of Him as doing all that. And while 
we have often to grieve that our best feelings and im- 
pulses die away so fast, think how the Apostles, every- 
where, tfirough all their after years, would have recalled 
to them when needful all things that the Sa^dour had 
said to them ; and how He said those things ; and how 
He looked as He said them. They had not to wait for 
seasons when the old time came over them; when 
through a rift in the cloud, as it were, they discerned for 
a minute the face they used to know ; and heard the 
voice again, like distant bells borne in upon the breeze. 
No : ^he look was always on St. Peter, that brought him 
back from his miserable wander; and St. John could 
recall the words of that parting discourse so accurately, 
after fifty years. 

The poet Motherwell begins a little poem with this 
verse : — 

" When I beneath the cold red earth am sleeping, 

Life's fever o'er, 
Will there for me be any bright eye* weeping 

That I 'm no more? 
Will there be any heart sad memory keeping 

Of heretofore ? " 

Now that is a pretty verse, but to my taste it seems 
tainted with sentimentalism. No man really in earnest 
could have written these lines. And I feel not the 
slightest respect for the desire to have "bright eyes 



108 REMEMBRANCE. 

weeping " for you, or to have some vague indefinite 
" heart " remembering you. Mr. Augustus Moddle, or 
any empty-headed lackadaisical lad, writing morbid 
verses in imitation of Byron, could do that kind of 
thing. The man whose desire of remembrance takes 
the shape of a "vvish to have some pretty girl crying for 
him (which is the thing aimed at in the mention of the 
" bright eye weeping ") is on precisely the same level, in 
regard to taste and sense, with the silly, conceited block- 
head who struts about in some place of faghionable 
resort, and fancies all the young women are looking at 
him. Why should people with whom you have nothing 
to do weep for you after you are dead, any more than 
look at you or think of you while you are living ? But 
it is a very different feeling, and an infinitely more 
respectable one, that dwells with the man who has out- 
grown silly sentimentalism, yet who looks at those whom 
he holds dearest; at those whose stay he is, and who 
make up his great interest in life ; at those whftn he 
will remember, and never forget, no matter where he 
may go in God's universe ; and who thinks, Now, when 
the impassable river runs between, — when I am an 
old remembrance, unseen for many years, — and when 
they are surrounded by the interests of their after life, 
and daily see many faces but never mine ; how will they 
think of me? Do not forget me, m.j little children 
whom I loved so much, when I shall go from you. I 
do not wish you (a wise, good man might say) to vex 
yourselves, little things ; I do not wish you to be gloomy 
or sad ; but sometimes think of your father and mother 
when they are far away. You may be sure that, 
wherever they are, they will not be forgetting you. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ON THE FOREST HILL: WITH SOME THOUGHTS 
TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 




HY is it that that purple hill will not get out 
of my mind to-night ? I am sure it is not 
that I cared for it so much when I could see 
it as often as I pleased. I suppose, my 
reader, that you know the painful vividness with which 
distant scenes and times will sometimes come back 
unbidden and unwished. No one can tell why. And 
now, at 11.25 P. M., when I have gone up to my room 
far away from home, and ought to go to bed, that hill 
will not go away. There is no use in trying. And 
nothing can be more certain than that if I went to bed 
now, I should toss about in a fever till 4 or 5 A. M. 
Well, as a smart gallop takes the nonsense out of an aged 
horse which has shown an unwonted friskness, there is 
sometliing which will quiet this present writer's pulse, 
and it shall be tried. Come out, you writing-case ; 
come forth, the foolscap, the ink-bottle, the little quill 
that has written many pages. And now you may come 
back again before the mind 's eye, purple hill, not seen 
for years. 

I shut my eyes, which if opened would behold many 



110 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

things not needful to be noted, and then the scene arises. 
In actual fact, the writer is surrounded by the usual 
furniture of a bedroom in a great railway hotel in a 
certain ancient city ; and occasional thundering sounds, 
and awful piercing screeches, speak of arriving and 
departing trains somewhat too near. I have walked 
round the city upon the wall ; and reaching a certain 
spot I sat down in the summer twilight, and looked for 
a long time at the old cathedral, which is not gray with 
age ; on the contrary, it is red, as though there lingered 
about its crumbling stones the sunsets of seven hundred 
summers. The day was, as we learn from Bishop 
Blomfield's Life^ wherein to be the chief minister of 
that noble church was esteemed as a very poor prefer- 
ment. And this estimation is justified by the statement 
that the annual revenue of the bishop was not so very 
many hundred pounds. But who shall calculate the 
money value of the privilege of living in this quaint old 
city, whose streets carry you back for centuries; and 
of worshipping, as often as you please, under that sub- 
lime roof; of breathing the moral atmosphere of the 
ancient place ; and of looking from its walls upon those 
blue hills and over those rich plains ? Surely one 
might here live a peaceful life of worship, thought, and 
study, amid Gothic walls and carved oak and church 
music. And if any ordinary man should declare that 
he could not be content with all this, just let me get 
him by the ears. Would n't I shake him ! 

But all this is a deviation. And if there is anything 
on which the writer prides himself, it is the severity 
of his logic. You will not find in his pages those 
desultory and wandering passages which attract the 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. Ill 

unthinking to the works of Archbishop Whately and 
Mr. John Stuart Milk And from this brief excursion 
he returns to the severe order of thought which is 
natural to him. 

I shut my eyes, as has been already remarked. The 
railway hotel, the thundering trains, and the yelling 
engines vanish, and the old scene arises. It is a bright 
autumn afternoon. The air is very still. The sun is 
very warm, and makes the swept cornfields gold- 
en. The trees are crimson and brown, and crisped 
leaves rustle beneath your foot. It is a long val- 
ley, with hills on either side, and a river flowing 
down it. A path winds by the river side, through the 
fields ; and there, in front, is the purple hill. An 
Englishman would think it pretty high. It is more 
than twelve hundred feet in height. The upper part 
of it is covered with heather. It rises like a great 
pyramid, closing in the valley. There are two or three 
little farm-houses half-way up it. Above these it is 
solitary and still. 

I wonder, this evening, being so far away, yet with 
painful distinctness seeing all that, whether I am there 
in fact as well as feeling ? Would some country lad, 
returning late from market, discern a shadowy figure 
walking slowly along the path, and bawl out and run 
away, recognizing me ? 

If you believe various recent books, you will under- 
stand that when you think very intently of a j^lace or 
person, it is not improbable that some misty eidolon of 
yourself is present to the person or at the place. I can- 
not say that I think this fact well authenticated. 

I walk on, not in the summer night, but in the au- 



112 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

tumn afternoon. I want to climb the hill, as I have 
done so often in departed days. So I lay aside the pen, 
and bend down my head on my hands. 

I have been there, if ever I was in my life. It is not 
every day one can sit in a very hard easy-chair, and 
take such a walk, nearly two hundred miles off. 

Through the long grass, with a dry rustle under one's 
feet, by the river's side ; up through a little wood of 
firs, till the highway is gained ; over a one-arched 
bridge, that spans a little rocky gorge, where a stream, 
smaller than the river, tumbles over a shelf of rock, 
making a noisy waterfall, now white as country snow 
that has lain but a night ; up a steep and rough road, 
with birches on either hand, and a brook flowing down 
on one side, that brawls in rainy weather, but only mur- 
murs on the still autumn day ; up and up till the hedges 
give place to walls of rude stones, built without mortar ; 
and till rough slopes of heather spread away on either 
side ; up and up till the path ceases, and you sit down 
on a great bowlder of granite in the lonely bosom of the 
hill : through all that I have been. A long way below 
this, but a longer way above the wooded valley, which 
you now see in its whole extent, you may discern the 
smoke rising from a farm-house, screened a little by a 
clump of rather scraggy pines. There is a sick man 
there, — an aged man whom I go to see frequently. I 
went to the farm-house door, a black and white dog 
barking furiously ; there a pleasant, comely, young face 
welcomed me. I went in and found my old friend sit- 
ting by his warm fireside, which was, indeed, a great 
deal too warm for any one who had been striving up 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 113 

that stiflf ascent. I saw his face and heard his voice, 
though he has been dead for years. I saw the sheep 
feeding on the hill around ; I heard a cart passing nois- 
ily along a road far below ; I saw the long gleam of the 
river, down in the valley, and the horizon of encircling 
hills : saw and heard all these things as really as though 
they had been present. Memory is certainly a most 
wonderful thing. It is very capricious. Sometimes it 
recalls things very faintly and dimly ; sometimes, with a 
vividness that makes one start. Can it be so long ago ! 
And it selects in a very arbitrary fashion what it will 
choose to remember. The faces and voices we would 
most desire to recall, it allows to fade away ; and scenes 
and people we did not particularly care for, it now and 
then sets before us with this strange vividness of force 
and color. I did not cherish any special regard for the 
old farmer ; and the walk up the hill was not a very 
great favorite. Yet to-night something took me by the 
collar and walked me up that path, and set me down 
beside the old man's chair. 

I have come back. It has exorcised the hill, to write 
all this about it. I had an eerie feeling, like that which 
De Quincey tells he had for many nights about the 
Malay to whom he gave the great piece of opium. But 
now the hill is appeased. All these odd, inexplicable 
states of thought and feeling are transitory. And it is 
much better that they should be so. Hard work crowds 
them out : it is only in comparative leisure they come at 
all. 

But we are not to suppose that only weak and fanciful 
persons know by experience these mental phenomena. 

H 



114 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

What may be called Dream-life (that is, spending some 
part of one's time in an imaginary world), is a thing in 
which some of the hardest-headed of human beings 
have had their share. And this little walk which the 
writer has had to-night in a place far away, and as upon a 
day that is left far behind, helps him to understand some 
of those singular things which are recorded of the extent 
to which many men have spent their time in castles in 
the air, and of the persistency with which they have 
dwelt there, to the forgetfulness of more tangible inter- 
ests. If ever there was a man who was not a morbid 
day-dreamer, it was Sir James Mackintosh. Sir James 
Mackintosh was known to mankind in general as an 
acute metaphysician, a forcible political writer, a brilliant 
talker. The greatest place he ever held, to the common 
eye, was that of Recorder of Bombay. And he held 
that place just the shortest time he possibly could to 
earn his pension. How many men knew, looking at the 
homely Scotchman, what his true place in life was ? Had 
he not told us himself, we should hardly have believed 
it. He was Emperor of Constantinople ! And a labo- 
rious and anxious position he found it. He (mentally) 
promoted many of his friends to important offices of 
state ; and his friends by their indiscretion and incom- 
petence caused him an immense deal of trouble. Then 
the empire was always getting involved in the most 
vexatious complications, which seriously affected the 
emperor's sleep and general health. He always felt like 
a man playing a very intricate game of chess. No 
wonder he was sometimes very absent and distracted. 
You would say he might have escaped all this by re- 
signing his crown; but he could not arrange satisfao- 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 115 

torily to do that. A thoughtless person smiles at these 
things ; but to Mackintosh they were among the most 
serious things of his life. A man of bread-and-butter 
understanding would exjDlain it by saying that Mackin- 
tosh was cracked ; but then we all know that he was 
not cracked. Yet in his disengaged hours, regularly as 
they came, was the thread of his history taken up where 
it had been dropped last time ; and he was the emperor, 
laden with an emj^eror's cares. It was not, as with the 
actor Elliston, received with great applause on the stage 
at Drury Lane, and fancying himself a king just long 
enough to bestow a blessing upon the audience, till he 
was pulled up by a burst of laughter. Nor was it like 
Alexander the Great, according to Dryden, who "as- 
sumed the god " for only a very limited period. Neither 
was the astute philosopher's notion of an emperor the 
childish one. He was not emperor, to sit on a throne 
and receive homage and make a grand appearance on 
grand occasions, but to go through intricate calculations 
and hard work, and to undergo great anxiety. 

In short. Sir James Mackintosh, being a great man, 
indulged in dream-life on a great scale. But common- 
place human beings do it in a way that suits themselves 
and their moderate aspirations. The poor consumptive 
girl, who, on a dark December evening, is propped up 
with pillows, and gets you to sit beside her while she 
tells you how much stronger and better she feels, how 
by spring she will be quite weU again, and how delight- 
ful the long walks will be in the summer evenings, while 
you know she will never see the black-thorn in blossom, 
nor the green leaves on the tree : she is doing just what 
the great metaphysician used to do. And the little 



116 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

schoolboy, far away from home, a thoughtful, bullied 
little fellow, does it too, when he pictures out the next 
holiday-time, and his getting away from all this to be 
with those who care for him. Possibly more people 
than you would think make up for the dulness of their 
actual life in some such way. They take pleasure in 
fancying what they would like in their vacant hours. 
And unless you wish your mind to become very small 
and diy, you will have such hours. No matter how 
hard-worked you may be, they are attainable. You re- 
member what Charles Lamb once wrote to a friend: 
" If you have but five consolatory minutes between the 
desk and the bed, make much of them, and live a cen- 
tury in them." Human beings, living even the most 
prosaic lives, have sometimes their enchanted palace, 
and live in it a great deal. Have you not sometimes, 
my reader, pictured out the life you would like, not in 
the least expecting it, or even really wishing it, any 
more than Mackintosh really looked to be made Empe- 
ror of Constantinople ? And when you have set your 
heart on something happening, which is very likely not 
to happen, it is quite right to please yourself by pictur- 
ing out the best : all the more that this is all the enjoy- 
ment of it you are likely to have. If we have all suf- 
fered a great deal of pain through the anticipation of 
evils which never came, we have all probably enjoyed 
a great deal of pleasure through the anticipation of 
pleasant things which were never to be. We have lived 
a good deal in castles which were never to be built, but 
in the air. When we tried for something we did not 
get, you remember well how we used, in vacant hours, 
to plan out all the mode of life, even to its minute de- 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 117 

tails ; enjoying it only the more keenly through the in- 
trusion of the fear that only in this airy fashion should 
we ever lead that life which we should have enjoyed so 
much. Of course, it is not expedient to waste in dream- 
ing over noble plans the precious hours which might 
have gone far to turn our dreams into serviceable reali- 
ties. It is foolish for the lad at college to spend, in 
thinking how proud his parents would be, and how 
pleased all his friends, if he were to carry off all the 
honors that were to be had, the time which, if devoted 
to hard work, might have gained at least some of those 
soon-forgotten laurels. It may be said here, by way of 
parenthesis, that one of the very last visions in which 
ambitious youth need indulge is the vision of being re- 
cognized as great and distinguished in the place of your 
birth or your early days. A prophet has no honor in 
his own country. I have a friend, greatly revered, who 
expresses an opposite opinion. He maintains, in a 
charming volume, that if you rise to decent eminence 
in life, the people who knew you as a boy will be proud 
of you, and will help to push you on farther. " I see, 
with my mind's eye," says my friend, " a statue of 
Dunsford, erected in ToUerporcorum." Dunsford was 
a native of ToUerporcorum ; and having recorded the 
conversation of his Friends in Council, would probably 
be thus distinguished. There are portions of this earth 
where the fact is just the contrary. ToUerporcorum is 
just the last place where certain Dunsfords I know are 
likely to have a statue. Dunsford's early acquaintances 
cannot bear the moderate success which has attended 
Dunsford in life ; they regard Friends in Council as a 
very poor work ; and a college acquaintance, who never 



118 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

forgave Dunsford tlie medals he won there, now and 
then abuses Dunsford in the Tollerporcorum newspaper. 
I lately visited a certain ToUerporcorum, — an ancient 
town in a fair tract of country. That Tollerporcorum 
had its Dunsford. Dunsford started from small begin- 
nings, but gradually rose about as high as a human 
being well can in a certain portion of Scandinavia. But 
the fashionable and intellectual thing in Tollerporco- 
rum was to ignore Dunsford and his career altogether. 
Nobody cared about him or it. Dunsford sometimes 
went back to Tollerporcorum; and the Tollerporcorum 
people diligently shut their eyes to his existence. Every 
envious little wretch who had stuck in the mud thus 
avenged himself on Dunsford for having got on so far. 
In the latter years of his honored life, Dunsford hardly 
ever visited Tollerporcorum ; and when the great man 
died, it was never proposed at TollerjDorcorum to erect 
so much as a drinking-fountain to his memory. 

Here ends the parenthesis. Take up the broken 
thread of thought. It is right and pleasant to gain at 
least the pleasure of anticipation out of happy things 
that are,not to be. And when you see a sanguine per- 
son in a state of great enjoyment through such anticipa- 
tion, you will not, unless you have in you the spirit of 
my old friend Mr. Snarling, try to throw a damp u]3on 
all this innocent happiness by pointing out, with great 
force of logic, how very little chance there is of the an- 
ticipation being realized. That is only the stronger 
reason for enjoying in this way that which you are not 
likely to enjoy in any other. There is hardly a more 
touching sight than the sight of a human being, old or 
young, happy in the anticipation of any pleasant thing 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 119 

which he will never reach. With what a rosy face and 
what bright eyes your little boy of five years old con- 
fides to you all he is to do when he is a man! Great 
are the grandeur and fame in which he is to live, many 
are to be his horses, and numerous his dogs ; but a great 
feature in his plan always is, how happy he is to make 
his father and mother. Ah ! little man, before those 
days come your father and mother will be far away. 

And a reason why a wise man, desirous to economize 
the enjoyment there is in this life, and to make it go as 
far as possible, will often quietly luxuriate in the pros- 
pect of what he secretly knows is not likely to happen, 
is this certain fact, that in this world the thing you 
would like best is the thing you are least likely to get. 
That is a fact which, as we get on through life, we come 
to know extremely well. Yes, if you set your heart on 
a thing, whoever gets it, you won't. You may get some- 
thing else, perhaps something better, but not that. If 
you have such an enthusiasm for Gothic architecture 
that you sometimes think no one could enjoy it so much, 
if you feel that it would sensibly flavor all your life to 
live in a Gothic house or to worship in a Gothic 
church, then, though everything else about them be 
all you could wish, rely on it, your church and house 
will be Palladian. And you will often meet men whose 
belongings are Gothic, who tell you they are very beau- 
tiful, very uncomfortable, that the church is destroying 
their lungs, and the house giving them perpetual cold in 
their heads, and who greatly envy you. Of course, 
all this is gratifying, to a certain degree. It serves to 
make you content. 

I have known a man who lived in a house which was 



120 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

extremely comfortable,, and extremely ugly. No one 
could ever say to what school of architecture, in par- 
ticular, his residence was to be referred. And the 
country round was very ugly and bare. But, like the 
farmer in Virgil, in that exquisite passage in one of 
the Georgics, regum cequabat opes animo ; he could 
picture out, at will, a charming English manor-house, 
of hospitable-looking red brick with stone dressings ; 
oriel-windowed, steep-gabled, with great wreathed chim- 
neys, with environing terraces, with magnificent horse- 
chestnuts ever blazing in the glory of June. You 
thought he was walking a bleak moorland road, dreary 
and dismal ; but in truth the warm breeze was 
shaking the blossoms overhead, and making a chequered 
dancing shade on soft gi'een turf below. And there 
yearly comes a certain season, when very many human 
beings practise on themselves a delusion something like 
his. I mean Christmas-time. Who ever spent the 
ideal Christmas ? I should like very greatly to behold 
that person. I have never done so yet : never spent a 
Christmas in all my life in the ideal way. You ought 
to be living in a noble Gothic house, somewhere in the 
midland counties of England. There ought to be a 
large and gay party, spending the holidays there. 
There ought to be an exquisite old church near. There 
ought to be bracing frost, and cheerful snow. All hearts 
should seem touched and warmed by the sacred asso- 
ciations of the season. There should be an oaken hall, 
and a vast wood-fire ; holly and mistletoe ; and of course' 
roast beef and plum-pudding and strong ale for every 
poor person near. You should be living, in short, at 
Bracebridge Hall, exactly as it was when Washington 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 121 

Irving described it, and with all the same people. It 
need not be said that in fact the Christmas time and 
its surroundings are quite different from all this. You 
sit down by yourself, and try to get up the feeling of 
the time by reading Washington Irving and Mr. Dickens's 
Christmas Carol. The Illustrated London News is a 
great help to ordinary imaginations at that season. 
On the actual Christmas-day, rainy, muddy, tooth- 
aching, ill-tempered, you turn over the pictures in that 
excellent journal ; and you find the ideal Christmas 
there. My friend Smith once told how he spent his 
first Christmas-day in his little country parsonage. 
Luckily there was snow. He provided that his ser- 
vants, three in number, should have the means of a little 
enjoyment. He worked hard all the forenoon writing 
a sermon, whose subject was not the Nativity. And 
for an hour before dinner he w^alked alone, up and down 
a little gravelled walk with evergreens on each side, 
looking at the leaden sky and the solitary fields, and 
trying to feel as if he were at Bracebridge Hall. He 
tried with small success. Then, having dined in soli- 
tude on turkey and plum-pudding, he read the pleasant 
Christmas chapter in Pickwick, and tried to get up an 
enthusiasm about the enjoyment which, for the sake of 
argument, might be conceived as existing in many 
houses that night. Finally, he concluded that he was 
unsuccessfully trying to humbug himself, and ended by 
reading Butler's Analogy in a good deal of bitterness of 
heart. 

Very early in our intelligent life, our personality be- 
gins to cut us off from those nearest us. Unless a pa- 
rent have a much deeper insight and sympathy than 

6 



122 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

most parents have, he loses knowledge very early of 
the real inward life of his children. At first, it is like 
wading in shallow water ; but it is not long till it shelves 
down into depths beyond your diving. The little 
thoughtful face you see every day; the little heart 
within you know just as much as you know the outer 
side of the moon. No doubt, if this be so, it is in a 
great measure your own fault. There are many parents 
to whom their children, young or old, would no more 
confide the things they really care for and think about 
than they would confide these to the first cabman at the 
next stand. But beyond this, the little things soon 
begin to have a world of their own, not known to any 
but themselves. You may have known young children 
who wearied for the hour when they might get to bed, 
and begin to think again ; take up the history where 
they left it off last night. Of course, the history and 
the world were very different from the fact. Kings and 
queens, heroes and giants, elves and fairies, palaces and 
castles, these being oftentimes enchanted, were common 
there. Also clear views of the kind of life they would live 
when they grew up ; a life in which coaches and six, 
suits of armor, and the like, were not unknown. . 

It is a mercy for some people, that circumstances 
keep them down. Their lot circumscribes their oppor- 
tunity of making fools of themselves. My friend Smith, 
already named, is a clergyman. His church is a plain 
one. Such is his craze for Gothic architecture, that I 
tremble to think what would have become of him if he 
had chanced to attain a maonificent church datinsj from 
the eleventh century, — a church with stately ranks of 
shafts, echoing aisles, storied window, crusaders' statues, 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 123 

rich oak carving, and monumental brasses, standing 
amid grand old trees. I fear he would have spent great 
part of his time in admiring and enjoying the structure ; 
in sitting on a gravestone outside and looking at it; 
in walking up and down inside it, and the like. It 
would have been a great feature in his life. It is much 
safer and better that he has been spared that temptation. 
The grand building, of course, has fallen to somebody 
who does not care for it at all. In a former age, there 
was a barrister who would have keenly enjoyed being 
made a judge. .Probably no man ever made a judge 
would have delighted so much in the little accessories 
of that eminent position, — the curious garb, and the 
varied dignity wherewith the administrators of the law 
are surrounded. How tremendously set up he would 
have been, if he could once have sentenced a man to be ^ 
hanged! The writer was present when the name of 
that person was suggested to an individual who could 
have made him what he wished to be. That individual 
was asked whether he might not do. That individual 
did not open his lips, but he shook his head slowly 
from side to side several times. For thus goes on this 
world. 

Probably most human beings, now and then, have 
short glimpses of cheerfulness and light-heartedness, 
which make them think how much more and better 
might be made of this hfe. You have seen a charm- 
ing scene, bathed in a glorious sunsliine, and you have 
thought. Now, it might always be like this. Sometimes 
there comes a hopefulness of spirit, in which all difficul- 
ties and perplexities vanish ; in which everything seems 
dehghtful, and all creatures good. This is the potential 



124 ON THE FOREST HILL: 

of happiness in man. Of course, it is seldom reached, 
and never for long. Most people are more familiar 
with the converse case, in which everything looks dark 
and amiss, — the season of perplexity, despondency, de- 
pression. Probably this comes many times more fre- 
quently than the other. Let me say, my reader, that 
we know the reason why. 

The truth is, it is not needful to our enjoyment of 
many things that we should fancy any connexion be- 
tween ourselves and them. You read a pleasant story, 
and like it, without fancying yourself its hero or hero- 
ine. Never in your life, perhaps, have you spent a week 
in a house like Bracebridge Hall ; and you are never 
likely to do that. Yet you enjoy the sunshiny volume ; 
and you thank its author for many hours of quiet, 
thoughtful enjoyment, for which you felt the better. 
And, indeed, much of what is pleasing and beautiful you 
enjoy most when you never think of it in relation to 
yourself. Take the most pleasing development of hu- 
man comeliness, which is doubtless in the case of young 
women. Let it be admitted that there are few things 
more pleasing and interesting to the rightly-constituted 
mind than the sight of sweet girlish faces and graceful 
girlish forms, and the tones of the pleasant voices that 
generally go with them. But there is no doubt earthly, 
that in grave middle age, you have much more real 
pleasure in these things than in feverish youth. Let us 
suppose, my reader, that you are a man in years. Those 
who W'Cre young girls in your day are middle-aged 
women now : they are past. But you look with the 
kindest interest on the fair young f9,ces of another gen- 
eration. A young lad is eager to commend himself to 



THOUGHTS TOUCHING DREAM-LIFE. 125 

the notice and admiration of these agreeable human be- 
ings. He is filled with bitter enmity at other lads more 
successful than himself in gaining their favor. His 
whole state of mind in the circumstances leads him into 
a host of absurdities : the contemplative mind sees him 
in the light of an ass. Now, you are beyond and above 
all these things. You look with pure pleasure and kind- 
ness at the fairest beings of God's creation; and you 
look at the fair sight and enjoy it as you look at Ben 
Lomond, or at the setting sun, without the faintest wish 
to make it your own. It is the entire absence of per- 
sonal interest that makes your interest so pleasant, and 
so unmingled with any disagreeable feeling. I remem- 
ber to have read, in a religious biography, a statement 
made by a very clever and good man about a certain 
beautiftil girl, called away in early youth. "I found 
myself," he said, " looking at her with an interest for 
which I could not account." Was that unsophisticated 
simphcity real? Not able to account for the interest 
with which you look at a pleasant sight! I think it 
might be accounted for. Though indeed when we go to 
first principles, we get beyond the reach of logical ex- 
planation. In strictness, you may not be able to say 
why the tear comes to your eye when you look at a 
number of little children, and think what is before them. 
In strictness, you may not be able to say why it was that 
so many people found themselves shedding tears, on a 
day in Westminster Abbey, when they saw the Crown 
placed on the head of a certain young girl who, in after 
years, was destined to gain the love of most hearts in 
Britain as the best of Queens. Yet a great many 
thoughtful persons have recorded that they were affected 



126 ON THE FOREST HILL. 

alike in beholding that sight. So there must have been 
something in the sight to awaken the emotion. 

These are the things of which the writer thought in 
the circumstances already set out. Probably it has made 
you sleepy to" read all this. It had the contrary effect 
to write it ; for when the writer at length wearily sought 
his couch, he could not sleep at all. 




CHAPTER VIII. 

A REMINISCENCE OF THE OLD TIME : BEING 
SOME THOUGHTS ON GOING AWAY. 




AM sure you know how, as we advance in 
life, hours come in which we feel an impulse 
to sit down for a little, and try to revive an 
old feeling, before it dies away; and many 
of our old feelings are dying away, and will ultimately 
die out altogether. It is partly through use, and partly 
because our system, physical and psychical, is growing 
less sensitive as we go on. We do not feel things now as 
we used to do. We are getting stronger, the robuster 
nerves of middle age do not receive the vivid impres- 
sions of earlier years, and there are faintly-flavored 
things which they cease to appreciate at alL We have 
come out from the green fields, and from the shady 
woodlands, and we are plodding along the beaten high- 
way of life. It is the noon now, not perhaps without 
some tendency to decline towards evening ; and we look 
back to the dawn and to the morning, when the air was 
cool and fresh, and when the sky was clear. And we 
have grown hardened to the rougher work o^ the pres- 
ent time. We have all got lines pretty deeply drawn 
upon our faces, and a good many gray hairs. And if 



128 A REMINISCENCE OF 

one could see a middle-aged soul, no doubt you would 
see about it something analogous to being wrinkled and 
gray. No doubt you would likewise discern something 
analogous to the thickening and toughening of the skin 
in the case of the middle-aged hand. Neither hand nor 
heart feels so keenly. 

There is no help for it, l^it still one cannot help re- 
gretting it, the way in which things lose their first fresh 
relish by use. We ought to be getting more enjoyment 
out of things than we do. A host of very small mat- 
ters, which we pass without ever noticing, would afford 
us real and sensible pleasure if we had not grown so 
accustomed to them. Prince Lee Boo, as we used to 
read, was moved to ecstatic wonder and delight by the 
upright walls and the flat ceiling of an ordinary room. 
They were new to him. There was a young Indian 
chief, many years ago, who came from the Far West to 
London, and was for a season a lion in fashionable 
society. He was a manly, clever young fellow, but in 
his English months he never got over his unsophisti- 
cated enjoyment of the furniture of English houses. 
And thoughtless folk despised him, when they ought 
rather to have envied him, as they witnessed his delight 
in the contemplation of a dinner-table where he had 
been accustomed to see a stretched bull's hide, and of 
plates, knives and forks, carpets, mirrors, window-cur- 
tains, and wash-hand stands. All these great luxuries, 
and a thousand more, he appreciated at their true value ; 
while civilized men and women, through familiarity, 
had arrivied at contempt of them. Which was right, 
the civilized folk or the savage man ? Is it the human 
being who sees least in the things around him that 



THE OLD TIME. 129 

ought to be proud, or is not the man rather to be envied 
who discerns in simple matters qualities and excellences 
which others do not discern ? If you had so worn out 
your eyes by constant use that you could no longer see, 
that would be nothing to plume yourself on ; you would 
have no right to think you had attained a position of 
superiority to the remainder of the human race, in 
whom the optic nerve still retained its sensitiveness. 
Yet there are people who are quite proud that their 
mind has had its nerves of sensation partially paralyzed, 
and who would like you to think that those nerves are 
entirely paralyzed. " I don't remark these things," 
they will say with an air of disdain, when you point out 
to them some of the little material advantages which we 
enjoy in this country now-a-days. They convey that 
they think you must be a weak-minded person because 
you do remark these things, because you still feel it a 
curious thing to leave London in the morning, and after 
ten hours and a half of unfatiguing travelling to reach 
Edinburgh in the evening ; or because you still are con- 
scious of a simple-minded wonder when you send a mes- 
sage five hundred miles, and get your answer back in a 
quarter of an hour. If there be a mortal whom I de- 
spise, it is the man who is anxious to impress you with 
the fact that he does not care in the least for anything. 
The human being who is proud because he has reached 
the nil admirari stage is just a human being who is 
proud because a creeping paralysis has numbed his 
soul. 

Yet without giving in to it, and without being proud 
of it, you are aware that the keen rehsh goes from that 
which you grow accustomed to. I have indeed heard it 



130 A REMINISCENCE OF 

Baid concerning certain individuals whose supercilious 
and lofty air testified that some sudden rise in life had 
turned their head, that they Hved in a state of constant 
surprise at finding themselves so respectable. But this 
statement was not true in its full extent. For after 
being for several years in a position for which nature 
never intended him, even Dr. Bumptious (before his 
elevation his name was Toady) must have grown to a 
certain measure accustomed to it. Even other people 
got accustomed to it. And though his incompetence for 
his place remained just as glaring as ever, they ceased 
to remark it, and came to accept it as something in the 
nature of things. You know, we do not perplex our- 
selves by inquiring every morning why there are such 
creatures as wasps, toads, and rattlesnakes. But if 
these beings were of a sudden introduced into this world 
for the first time, it would be different. 

It is to be lamented that the very fresh and sensible 
enjoyment which we derive from very little things', when 
they are new to us, passes so completely away when 
they grow familiar. I remark that my fellow-creatures, 
who inhabit houses in this street, are very far from being 
duly thankful for the great privilege we possess in hav- 
ing a post-ofiice at the end of it. You write your let- 
ters in the forenoon after you have completed your more 
serious work, and upon each envelope you stick the rep- 
resentation of a face which is very familiar to us all, 
and very dear. If you are a wise man, you post your 
letters for yourself; and accordingly the first thing you 
do daily, when you go forth to your out-door business or 
duty, is to proceed to that little opening which receives 
the expression of so much care, so much kindness, so 



THE OLD TIME. 131 

much worry, so mucli joy and sorrow, and to drop the 
documents in. Not many of the human beings who post 
letters and who receive them have any habitual sense of 
the supreme luxury they enjoy in that familiar institu- 
tion of the post-office. Into that little opening goes 
your letter ; a penny secures its admission, and obtains 
for it very distinguished consideration; and in a little 
while the most ingenious mechanism that has been de- 
vised by the most ingenious minds is hard at work con- 
veying your letter, at tremendous speed, by land or sea ; 
till next morning, unerring as the eagle upon its eyrie, 
it swoops down upon the precise dwelling at which you 
aimed it. When I say it swoops down upon a dwelling 
in the country, I mean to express poetically the fact 
that it comes jogging along in a cart drawn by a little 
white pony, which stops for the purposes of conversation 
whenever it meets anybody in the wooded lane I have 
in my mind. But in saying that the inhabitants of this 
street are not duly thankful for the post-office at the cor- 
"ner, I did not mean merely that they fail to understand 
what a blessing to Britain the system of postal commu- 
nication is. Everybody, on ordinary days, fails to un- 
derstand that. I was thinking of something else. I 
was thinking of the luxury of having a receiving-house 
so near. When I lived in the country, the post-office 
was five miles distant ; and if you missed the chance of 
sending away your letters in the morning by the cart 
drawn by the white pony, you must wait till next day, 
or you must send a special messenger to the old-fash- 
ioned town of red freestone dwellings, standing by a 
classic river's side. Let not that town be mentioned 
save in complimentary terms. Let me learn by the 



132 A REMINISCENCE OF 

misfortune of another. An eminent native of the dis- 
trict which surrounds it, known in the world of letters, 
once upon a time published some remarks upon tliat 
town, disguising its pretty name in another of somewhat 
ludicrous sound. And when that eminent man shortly 
afterwards strove to persuade the inhabitants to send 
him to represent them in Parliament, the old offence 
was raked up, and it did him harm. Tliis, however, is 
a digression. Let us return. When I came from the 
country, to live in this city, I felt it a great privilege, 
and something to be enjoyed freshly every time, to take 
my letters to the post-office, two hundred yards off. It 
was delightful. Not once in the day, but (if need were) 
half a dozen times, could you write your letter, and m 
three minutes have it in the post-office. There was 
something very fresh and enjoyable in the reflection, as 
you stood by the receiving-house window. Now here in 
these minutes I am in the same position in which half 
an hour's smart driving, or an hour and a quarter's 
steady walking, would have placed one in departed 
days ! Wonderful ! But now, after several years of 
the enjoyment of this privilege, the fresh wonder has 
worn away. The edge of enjoyment is dulled. And 
though I try hard, in going to the post-office, to feel 
what a blessing it is, I cannot feel it as I would wish. 
Yes, the enjoyment of the post-office is gone in great 
measure ; even as the unutterable greenness discerned 
by the stranger goes from the summer trees among 
which you have come to feel yourself at home ; even as 
the sound of Niagara becomes inaudible to the waiters 
at the Niagara Hotel; even as the bishop who was 
plucked at college gradually ceases to be astonished at 



THE OLD TIME. 133 

finding himself a bishop ; even as Miss Smith, in a few 
weeks after she is married, no longer feels it strange to 
be called Mrs. Jones ; even as the readers of what is 
with bitter irony called a religious newspaper lose their 
first bewilderment at finding a human animal writing an 
article filled with intentional misrepresentation, lying, 
and slandering, and ending the article by taking God to 
witness that in abusing the man he hates for his success 
and eminence, he is actuated by a simple regard to the 
Divine glory. 

And thus it is, remembering how the old time and the 
old way fade out, that the writer has resolved to give a 
little space of comparative rest to reviving (as far as 
may be) something which used to have a strongly felt 
character of its own in years which are gone, and which 
are melting into blue distance fast. Let me seek to 
bring up again the atmosphere of Going Away, as it 
used to be, and to be felt. No doubt there is a certain 
fancifulness about moral atmospheres ; not all men feel 
them ahke ; and there are robust natures which probably 
do not feel them at all. When a man comes to describe 
a house, a landscape, a mode of life, not as these are in 
literal fact, but as these impress himself, then we get 
into a realm of uncertainty and fancy. When a man 
ceases to say of a dwelling that it is built of red brick, 
that it has so many windows in front, that it is so many 
stories high, that it has evergreens of such kinds round 
it, and the like ; and when the man goes on to describe 
the house by quite other characteristics, — saying that it 
is a sleepy-looking house, a dull house, a hospitable- 
looking house, an eerie strange-looking house, a house 
that makes you feel queer, — then you feel that though 



134 A REMINISCENCE OF 

the man may convey to another man, who is in sympathy 
with himself, a very true impression of the fact as it 
presents itself to him, still there are many people to 
whom such descriptions are really quite unintelligible ; 
and that those who are most capable of understanding 
them are least likely to agree as to their truth. It is so 
with what I have called moral atmospheres ; the per- 
vading characteristic of a time, a scene, a way of life, a 
human being. Nor can it be admitted that there is any- 
thing of morbid sensitiveness in being keenly aware of 
these. Most people know the vague sort of sense that 
you have of being in a remote pastoral country, or of 
being in a busy town. You feel a difference in the 
morning whenever you awake, and before you have fully 
gathered up your consciousness ; it pervades your very 
dreams. You remember periods of your life about 
which there was a kind of flavor ; strongly felt, but in- 
describable to others ; not to be expressed in any spoken 
words ; Mendelssohn or Beethoven might have come 
near expressing it in music ; and it comes back upon 
you in reading some passage in In Memoriam which has 
nothing to do with it, or in looking at the first yellow cro- 
cus in the cold March sunshine, or in walking along a 
lane with blossoming hawthorn on either hand, or in 
smelling the blossoms of an apple-tree. And when you 
look back, you feel the atmosphere surround you again 
with its fragrance a good deal gone, and with its colors 
faded. It is a misty, ghost-like image of a past life and 
its surroundings that steals vaguely before your mental 
sight ; and possibly it cannot be more accurately or 
expressively described than by saying that the old time 
comes over you. 



THE OLD TIME. 135 

Doubtless external scenery has a great deal to do in 
the production of that general sense of a character per- 
vading one's whole mode of life, which I mean by a 
moral atmosphere. It is especially so if you lead a 
lonely life, or if you have not many companions, and 
these not very energetic or striking. How well many 
men in orders remember the peculiar flavor of the time 
when they first began their parochial duty ! Years af- 
terwards, you go and walk up and down in the church 
where you preached your first sermons, and you try to 
awaken the feeling of that departed time. It comes 
back in a ghostly, unsubstantial way ; sometimes it re- 
fuses to be wakened up at all. And the feeling, what- 
ever it may be, is (to many men) very mainly flavored 
by the outward scene in which that time was spent. I 
can easily believe that there are persons on whose mood 
and character no appreciable impression is produced by 
external scenery : probably the reader knows one or two. 
They have usually high cheek-bones, smoke-dried com- 
plexions, and disagreeable voices ; they think Mr. Ten- 
nyson a fool, and tell you that they cannot understand 
him, in a tone that conveys that in their judgment no- 
body can. I have known men who declared honestly 
that they did not think Westminster Abbey in the least 
a more solemn place than a red brick meeting-house with 
a flat ceiling, and with its inner walls chastely white- 
washed, or papered with a paper representing yellow 
marble. My acquaintance with such individuals was 
slight, and by mutual consent it speedily ceased. Give 
us the man who frankly tells you how different a man 
he is in this place from what he is in that, how outward 
nature casts its light or its shadow upon all his thinking 



136 A REMINISCENCE OF 

and feeling. What would you be, my friend, if you lived 
for months by a misty Shetland sea, or amid a wild Irish 
bogland, or in a wooden chalet at Meyringen, or on a flat 
French plain, with white ribbons of highway stretching 
across it, bordered with weary poplars; or under the 
shadow of castle-crowned crags upon the Rhine, or amid 
the bustle of a great commercial town, -or in the classic 
air of an ancient university city, with a feast of Gothic 
everywhere for the eyes, and with courts of velvety turf 
that has been velvety turf for ages? But here I get 
into the region of the fanciful ; and though holding very 
strongly a certain theory about these things, I am not 
going to set it out here. Yet I cannot but believe that, 
when you read men's written thoughts, you may readily, 
if you be of a sensitive nature, feel the surroundings 
amid which they were written. Turn over the volume 
which was written in the country by a man keenly alive 
to outward things and their influences, and you will be 
aware of a breeziness about the pages, — a fresher air 
seems to breathe from them, the atmosphere of that sim- 
ple life and its little cares. Turn over the Best of all 
books : read especially the accounts of patriarchal times 
in Genesis: and (inspiration apart) you will feel the 
presence of something indefinitely more than the bare 
facts recorded. You will feel the fresh breeze come to 
you over the ocean of intervening centuries : you will 
know that a whole life and its interests surround you 
again. And there seems to me no more marked differ- 
ence between fictitious stories written by men of genius 
and written by commonplace people than this, that the 
commonplace people make you aware of just the inci- 
dents they record, while the man of genius makes you 



THE OLD TBIE. 137 

aware of a vast deal more, — of the entire atmosphere 
of the surrounding circumstances and concerns and life. 
You will understand what is meant when I remind you 
of the wonderful way in which the battle of Waterloo is 
made to surround and pervade a certain portion of the 
train of events recorded in that thoroughly true history, 
Mr. Thackeray's Vanity Fair. 

Now all that is pleasant. I mean to the writer, not 
necessarily to the reader. The writer has to produce 
a multitude of pages, which to produce is of the nature 
of grave work ; and in them he must hold right on, and 
discuss his subject under no small sense of responsibility. 
But such pages as this are his play ; and he may with- 
out rebuke turn hither and thither, and pluck the wild 
flowers on either side of the path. O how hard work it 
is to write a sermon ; and, when one is in the vein, how 
easy it is to write an essay ! And, in saying that all 
this is pleasant, the thing present to the author's mind 
was the very devious course which his train of thought 
has followed since the first sentence of this dissertation 
was written. I have a great respect for certain men, 
who write in a logical and scholarly way. I admire 
and esteem such. When I read their productions at 
all, I do so after breakfast, when one's wits are fully 
awake. But in the evening, by the fireside, when the 
day's work and worry are over, and there remains the 
precious little breathing-space, I would rather not read 
them. Neither do I desire here to write like them. 

Going Away is my subject. Going Away and its 
atmosphere, as it used to be, and as it is to many people 
now. Going Away from home. Not Going Away for 
ever ; not Going Away for a long time ; not Going 



138 A REMINISCENCE OF 

Away under painful circumstances. Ordinary and com- 
monplace Going Away. 

And let me tell you, intrepid travellers, who think 
nothing of flying away to London, to Paris, to Cha- 
mouni, to Constantinople, that Going Away for a week 
or two, and to a distance not exceeding a hundred miles, 
is a very serious thing to a quiet, stay-at-home person. 
A multitude of contingencies suggest themselves in its 
prospect ; there is the vague fear of the great, temble 
outside world. It is as when a little boat, that has been 
lying safe in some sheltered cove, puts out to sea, to 
face the full might of winds and waves ; when a lonely 
human being, who for months has plodded his little 
round of work and care, looking at the same scenes, and 
conversing with the same people, musters courage to go 
away for a little while. There is a considerable inertia 
to overcome ; some effort of resolution is needed. When 
you have lived an unvaried life for many weeks in a 
quiet country place, your wish is to sit still. Yet there 
are great advantages which belong to people who have 
seen little or nothing. They have so keen a sense of 
interest, and so lively an impression of the facts, in be- 
holding something new. By and by they come to take 
it easily. You look out of the window of the railway 
carriage, and in reply to something said by a fellow- 
traveller, you say, " Ah, that 's Berne, or that 's Lau- 
sanne," and you return to your Times or your Saturday 
Review. You look forth on the left hand, as the train 
rounds a curve, and say, " Strasburg spire ; very fine. 
Four hundred and fifty feet high. It does not look 
nearly so much from this point." Now once it was very 
different. It was a vivid sensation to see for the first 



THE OLD TIME. 139. 

time some town in England, or some lake or hill in 
Scotland. My friend Smith told me that once, for more 
than six years, beginning when he was eight-and-twenty, 
he never had stirred ten miles from his home and his 
parish, save when he went in the aiitunm for a few 
weeks to the seaside ; and then he went always to the 
same place, a journey of four hours or so. It would 
have done him much good — had he been able some- 
times through those years which were very anxious 
and very trying ones — to have the benefit of a little 
change of scene. But he could not afford it ; and m 
those days of depressed fortune, he had, literally, not a 
friend in this world, beyond the Httle circle of his own 
home. He had, indeed, some acquaintances ; but they 
were able to understand him or sympathize with him 
about as much as a donkey could. But better days 
came, as (let us trust) they will come, through hard 
work and self-denial, to most men, by God's blessing ; 
and Smith could venture on the great enterprise of a 
journey to London. Ah ! an express train was a great 
thing to him ; and a journey of three hundred miles an 
endless pilgrimage. And he told me himself (he is in 
his grave now, and no one who knew him will know 
liim by what has been said of him) that it was an extra- 
ordinary feeling to look out of the carriage-window, and 
to think. Now Cambridge is only a few, miles off, over 
these flats ! And farther on, when the trains glided by 
the capital of the Fens, and the noble mass of Peter- 
borough Cathedral loomed through the misty morning, 
it was a stranger object to him than St. Sophia or even 
the Mosque of Omar would be to you ; and he thought 
how curious a thinor it would be to live on that wide 



140 A REMINISCENCE OF 

plain, in that quiet little city, under the shadow of that 
magnificent pile. Probably, my friend, you have been 
long enough in many striking places to feel their first 
interest and impression go, to feel their moral atmos- 
phere become inappreciable. You feel all that keenly 
at first ; but gradually the place becomes just like any- 
where else. After a while, the inner atmosphere over- 
powers the outer ; the world within the breast gives its 
tone and color to the scene around you. I believe 
firmly, that if you want to know a place vividly and 
really (I mean a town of moderate extent), you ought to 
stay in it just a day and no more. By remaining longer, 
you may come to know all the churches and shops, and 
the like ; but you will lose the pervading atmosphere 
and character of the whole. First impressions are always 
the most vivid; and I firmly believe they are in the 
vast majority of cases the most truthful. An observant 
and sensitive man, spending just a day in a town with 
twenty thousand inhabitants, knows what kind of place 
that town is far better than an ordinarily observant 
person who has lived in it for twenty years. 

The truth is, that a little of a thing is usually far 
more impressive than the whole of it, or than a great 
deal of it. Don't you remember how, when you were 
a child, lying in bed in the morning, you used to watch 
the daylight through the shutters ? And you remem- 
ber how bright it looked, through the narrow line where 
the shutters hardly met : it was like a glowing fire. At 
length, the shutters were thrown back, and they let in 
all the day ; and it was nothing so bright. Even if the 
morning was sunshiny, there was a sad falling off; 
and perhaps the morning was dull and rainy. Even 



THE OLD TIME. 141 

SO is the glimpse of Peterborough from the passing 
express train, infinitely finer than the view of Peter- 
borough to the man who lives in it all the year round. 
Even so has the quiet life of a cathedral city a charm 
to the visitor for a day, who has come from a land 
where cathedrals are not, which fades away to such as 
spend all their days in the venerable place, and come 
to have associations not merely of glorious architecture 
and sublime music, but likewise of many petty am- 
bitions, jealousies, diplomacies, and disappointments ; 
and, in short, of Mr. Slope and Mrs. Proudie. Yes, a 
little of a thing is sometimes infinitely better than the 
whole ; and it is the little which especially has power 
to convey that general estimate of a pervading char- 
acteristic which we understand by perceiving the moral 
atmosphere. And besides this, you may have a surfeit 
of even the things you like best. You heartily enjoy 
a little country Gothic church ; you linger on every 
detail of it ; it is a pure delight. But a great cathedral 
is almost too much : it wearies you, it overwhelms you. 
You may get, through one summer day, as much enjoy- 
ment out of Sonning Church as out of York Minster. 
That perfection of an English parish church, with its 
perfect vicarage, by the beautiful Thames, is like a 
friend with whom you can cordially shake hands : the 
great minster is like a monarch to be approached on 
bended knee. Most people remember a case in which 
a thousandth part would have been far better than the 
whole : I mean, the Great Exhibition in that fine shed 
which the nation declined to buy. You would have 
enjoyed the sight of a little of what was gathered 
there ; but the whole was a fearful task to get through. 



142 A REMINISCENCE OF 

I never beheld more wearied, dazed, stupefied, disgusted, 
and miserable countenances, than among rich and poor 
under that roof. I wonder whether any mortal ever 
really enjoyed that glare and noise and hubbub, or felt his 
soul expanded under the influence of that huge educa- 
tional institution. Too many magazines or books, too, 
coming together, convert into a toil what ought to be a 
pleasure. You look at the mass, and you cannot help 
thinking what a deal you have to get through. And 
that thought is in all cases fatal to enjoyment. When- 
ever it enters the heart of a little boy, contemplating 
his third plate of jDlum-pudding, the delight iraj^lied in 
plum-pudding has vanished. Whenever the hearer 
listens to the preacher describing what he is to do in 
the first and second j^lace, and so on to the fifth or 
sixth, the enjoyment with which most sermons are heard 
is sensibly diminished. And even if you be very fond 
of books, there is a sense of desolation in being turned 
loose in a library of three hundred thousand volumes. 
That huge array is an incubus on your spirit. There 
is far more sensible pleasure when you go into a friend's 
snug little study, and dihgently survey his thousand or 
twelve hundred books. And you know that if a man 
has a drawing-room a hundred feet long, he takes pains 
to convert that large room into a little one, by enclosing 
a warm space round the fii*e with great screens for 
his evening retreat. Yes, a little is generally much 
better than a great deal. 

A thing which precedes Going Away is packing up. 
And this the wise man will do for himself, the more so 
if he cannot afford to have any one to do it for him. 
There is a great pleasure in doing things for yourself. 



THE OLD TIME. 143 

And liere is one of the compensations of poverty. You 
open for yourself the parcel of new books you have 
bought, and with your own hand you cut the leaves. 
A great peer, of course, could not do this, I suppose. 
The volumes would be prepared for his reading, and 
laid before him with nothing to do but to read them. 
Now, it ought to be understood, that the reading of a 
book is by no means the only use you can put it to, or 
the only good you can get out of it. There is the en- 
joyment of stripping off the massive wrappings in which 
the volumes travelled from the bookseller's shop, 
through devious ways, to the country home. There is 
the enjoyment of cutting the leaves, which, if you have 
a large ivoiy paper knife, is a very sensible one. There 
is the enjoyment of laying the volumes after their leaves 
are cut upon your study table, and sitting down in an 
arm-chair by the fireside, and calmly and thoughtfully 
looking at them. There is the enjoyment of considering 
earnestly the place where they shall be put on your 
shelves, and then of placing them there, and of arrang- 
ing the volumes which have been turned out to make 
room for them. All these pleasures you have, quite 
apart from the act of reading the books ; and all these 
pleasures are denied to the rich and mighty man who is 
too great to be allowed to do things for himself. He 
has only the end : we have both the end and the means 
which lead up to it. And the greater part of human 
enjoyment is the enjoyment of means, not of ends. 
There is as much solid satisfaction in going out and 
looking at your horse in his warm stable as in riding 
or driving him. An eminent sportsman begins a book 
in which he gives an account of his exploits in hunting 



144 A REMINISCENCE OF 

in a foreign country, by fondly telling how happy he 
was in petting up his old guns till they looked like new, 
and in preparing and packing ammunition in the pros- 
pect of setting off on his expedition. You can see that 
these tranquil and busy days of anticipation and pre- 
paration at home were at least as enjoyable as the more 
exciting days of actual sport which followed. Now, 
however much a duke might like to do all this, I 
suppose his nobility would oblige him to forego the 
satisfaction. 

If you have a wife and children (and for the pur- 
poses of this essay I suppose you to have both), the 
multitude of trunks and packing-cases in which their 
jDossessions are bestowed in the prospect of going away, 
are sought out and packed apart from any exertion or 
superintendence on your part. Your share consists in 
writing addresses for them, and in counting up the 
twenty-three things that are assembled in the lobby 
before they are loaded on cart, cab, or carriage. I have 
remarked it as a curious thing, that when a man with 
his wife and two or three children and three or four 
servants go to the seaside in autumn, the articles of lug- 
gage invariably amount to twenty-thi*ee. And it has 
ever been to me a strange and perplexing thought, how 
so many trunks and boxes are needed, and how, through 
various changes by land and sea, they get safely to their 
destination. There are few positions which awaken 
more gratitude and satisfaction in the average human 
being, than (having arrived at the seaside place) to see 
the twenty-three things safe upon the little pier, after 
the roaring steamer which brought them has departed, 
and the little crowd has dispersed ; when, amid the still- 



THE OLD TIME. 145 

ness, suddenly become audible, you tell the keeper of 
the pier to send your baggage to the dwelling which is 
to be your temporary home. A position even more 
gratifying is as follows : when, returning to town, your 
holiday over, you succeed, by the aid of two liberally- 
tipped porters, in recovering all your effects from the 
luggage-van of the railway-train, amid an awful crowd 
and confusion on the platform, and accumulating them 
into a heap, for whose conveyance you would assuredly 
be called to pay extra but for the judicious largesse 
already alluded to ; then in seeing them piled in and 
upon three cabs, in which you slowly wend your way to 
your door; and finally, in the lobby, whence they origi- 
nally started, counting up your twenty-three things once 
more. Yes, there is much pleasure attendant on the 
possession and conveyance of luggage ; a pleasure min- 
gled with pain, indeed, like most of our pleasures ; a 
pleasure dashed with anxiety and clouded with confu- 
sion, yet ultimately passing into a sense of delightful 
rest and relief, as you count up the twenty-three things 
and find them all right, which you had hardly dared to 
hope they would ever be. 

So much having been said concerning the general 
luggage of the family, let us return to the thought of 
your own personal packing. You pack your own port- 
manteau, arranging things in that order which long usage 
has led you to esteem as the best. And if you 'be a 
clergyman, you always introduce into that receptacle 
your sermon-case with two or three sermons. You do 
this, if you be a wise man, though there should not ap- 
pear the faintest chance of your having to preach any- 
where, — having learned by experience how often and 



146 A REMINISCENCE OF 

bow unexpectedly such chances occur. And then, when 
your portmanteau is finally strapped up and ready to go, 
you look at it with a moralizing glance, and think how 
little a thing it looks to hold such a great deal. It is 
like a general principle, including a host of individual 
cases. It is like a bold assertion, which you accept 
without thinking of all it implies. And in a short time 
that compendium of things immediately needful will be 
one among a score like it in the luggage-van. Thus, the 
philosopher may reflect, is every man's own concern the 
most interesting to himself, because every man knows 
best what is involved in his own concern. 

There are many associations about the battered old 
leathern object, and it is sad to remark that it is wear- 
ing out. It is to many people a sensible trial to throw 
aside anything they have had for a long time. And this 
thing especially, which has faithfully kept so many things 
you intrusted to it, and which has gone with you to so 
many places, seems to cast a silent appealing look at 
you when you think it is getting so shabby that you 
must throw it aside. Some day you and I, my friend, 
will be like an old portmanteau ; and we shall be pushed 
out of the way to make room for something fresh. 
Probably it is worldly wisdom to treat trunks and men 
like that single-minded person, Mr. Uppish, who stead- 
fastly cuts his old friends as he gradually gets into a 
superior social stratum. Doubtless he has his reward. 

It is invariably on Monday morning that certain hu- 
man beings Go Away, in the grave and formal manner 
which has been spoken of. I mean, with an entire fam- 
ily, and with the twenty-three trunks, many of them 



THE OLD TIME. 147 

very large ones. Not unfrequently a perambulator is 
present, also a nursery crib. And going at that especial 
period of the week, there is a certain thing inevitably 
associated with Going Away. That thing is the periodi- 
cal called the Saturday Review. It comes every Mon- 
day morning ; and you cut the leaves after breakfast and 
glance over it, but you put off the reading of it till the 
evening. But on those travelling days this paper is 
associated with the forenoon. Breakfast is a hasty meal 
that day. The heavy baggage, if you dwell in the 
country, has gone away early in a cart, — the railway 
station is of course five miles off. And then, just a 
quarter of an hour after the period you had named to 
your man-servant, round comes the phaeton which can 
hold so much. It comes at the very moment you really 
desired to have it, — for knowing that your servant will 
always be exactly a quarter of an hour too late, you al- 
ways order it just a quarter of an hour before the time 
you really want it. Phaeton of chocolate hue, picked 
out with red and white ; horse of the sixteen hands and 
an inch, jet black of color, well-bred in blood, and gen- 
tle of nature, where are you both to-night ? Through 
the purple moorlands, through the rich cornfields, along 
the shady lanes, up the High-street of the little town, 
we have gone together ; but the day came at length 
when you had to go one way and I another ; and we have 
each gone through a good deal of hard work doubtless 
since then. Pleasant it is, driving home from the town 
in the winter afternoon, and reaching your door when it 
has grown pretty dark ; pleasant is the flood of mellow 
light that issues forth when your door is opened ; pleas- 
ant is it to witness the unloading of the vast amount and 



148 A REMINISCENCE OF 

variety of things which, in various receptacles, that far 
from ponderous equipage could convey ; pleasant to 
witness the pile that accumulates on the topmost step 
before your door ; pleasant to behold the bundle of books 
and magazines from the reading-club ; pleasanter to see 
the less frequent parcel of those which you can call your 
own ; pleasant to see the manifold brown-paper parcels 
enter the house, which seems to be such a devouring 
monster, craving ceaseless fresh supply. All this while 
the night is falling fast, and the great trees look down, 
ghost-like, upon the little bustle underneath them. Then 
phaeton and horse depart ; and in a little you go round 
to the stable-yard, and find your faithful steed, now dry 
and warm, in his snug stall, eagerly eating, yet bearing 
in a kindly way a few pats on the neck and a few pulls 
of the ears. And your faithful man-servant is quite 
sure to have some wonderful intelligence to convey to 
you, picked up in town that afternoon. In the country, 
you have not merely the enjoyment of rich summer 
scenery, of warm sunsets, and green leaves shining gold- 
en ; there is a peculiar pleasure known to the thorough 
country man in the most wintry aspects of nature. The 
bleak trees and sky outside, the moan of the rising wind 
presaging a wild night, and the brawl of the swollen 
brook that runs hard by, all make one value the warmth 
and light and comfort within doors about forty times as 
much as you could value these simple blessings in a 
great city, where they seem quite natural, and matters 
of course. Of course, a great man would not care for 
these things, and would despise the small human being 
that does care for them. Let the great man take his 
own way, and let the small human being be allowed to 
follow his in peace. 



THE OLD TIME. 149 

This, however, is a deviation to an evening on which 
you come home ; whereas our proper subject is a morn- 
ing on which you go away from home. The phaeton 
has come to the door ; many little things go in ; finally 
the passengers take their seats, and the thick rugs are 
tucked in over their knees ; then you take the reins (for 
you drive yourself), and you wind away outward till 
you enter the highway. The roads are smooth and 
firm, and for all the heavy load behind him, the black 
horse trots briskly away. Have I not beheld a human 
being, his mfe, two children, a man-servant, and a wo- 
man-servant, steadily skimming along at a respectable 
nine miles an hour, with but one living creature for all 
the means of locomotion ? And the living creature was 
shining and plump, and unmistakably happy. The five 
miles are overcome, and you enter the court-yard of 
your little railway station. There in a heap, cunningly 
placed on the platform where the luggage-van may be 
expected to rest when the train stops, is your luggage. 
The cart has been faithful : there are the twenty-three 
things. You have driven the last mile or two under a 
certain fear lest you might be too late ; and that fear 
will quicken an unsophisticated country pulse. But 
you have ten minutes to spare. There are no people 
but your own party to divide the attention of the soli- 
tary porter. At length, a mile ofi", along the river bank, 
you discern the sinuous train : in a little the tremen- 
dously energetic locomotive passes by you, and the train 
is at rest. You happily find a compartment which is 
empty, and there you swiftly bestow your living charge ; 
and having done this you hasten to witness the safe 
embarkation of the twenty-three trunks and packages. 



150 A REMINISCENCE OF 

All this must be done rapidly, and of course you take 
much more trouble than a more experienced traveller 
would. And when at length you hurriedly climb into 
your place, you sink down in your seat, and feel a de- 
licious sense of quiet. The morning has been one of 
worry, after all. But now you are all right for the next 
four hours. And that is a long look forward. You 
keenly appreciate this blink of entire rest. Your unac- 
customed nerves have been stretched by that fear of 
being late ; then there was the hurry of getting the 
children into their carriage, and seeing after the twenty- 
three things ; and now comes a reaction. For a few 
miles it is enough just to sit still, and look at the faces 
beside you and opposite you, and especially to watch the 
wonder imprinted on the two round little faces looking 
out of the window. First, looking out on either side 
there is a deep gorge ; great trees ; rocks on one side, and 
on the other side a river. By and by the golden gleam 
of ripe cornfields in the sunshine on either hand light- 
ens up all faces. And now, forth from its bag comes 
the Saturday Review ; and you read it luxuriously, with 
frequent pauses and lookings out between. Do the 
keen, sharp, brilliant men who write those trenchant 
paragraphs ever think of the calm enjoyment they are 
providing for simple minds ? Although you do not care 
in the least about the subject discussed, there is a keen 
pleasure in remarking the skill and pith and felicity 
with which the writer discusses it. You feel a certain 
satisfaction in thinking that every Monday since that 
periodical started on its career, you have read it. It is 
a sort of intellectual thing to do. You reflect with 
pleasure on the statement made on oath by a witness in 



THE OLD TBIE. 151 

a famous trial. He described a certain person as " a 
sensible and intelligent man who took in the Times" 
What proof, then, of scholarly likings, and of power to 
appreciate what not everybody can appreciate, should 
be esteemed as furnished by the fact that a man pays for 
and reads the Saturday Review f 

Now here, my reader, we have reached the very ar- 
ticle of Going Away. Many are the thoughts through 
which we approached it : here it is at last. Behold the 
human being, about the first day of August, seated in a 
corner of a railway carriage, whose cushions are luxu- 
rious, and whose general effect is of blue cloth within, 
and varnished teak without. Opposite the human being 
sits his wife. Pervading the carriage you may behold 
two children. And carefully tending them, and seeking 
vainly to keep them quiet, you may (in very many 
cases, for such excellent persons are happily not uncom- 
mon) discern a certain nurse, who is as a member of 
that little family circle ; more than a trusted and valued 
servant, even a faithful friend. That is how human 
beings Go Away. That is the kind of picture which 
rises in the writer's mind, and in the mind of very many 
people in a like station in this life, when looking back 
over not many years. 

There is a certain cumbrous enjoyment in all Going 
Away, bearing with you all these impedimenta ; even 
when you are going merely for a Christmas week or 
the Uke. But the great Going Away is at the begin- 
ning of your autumn holidays. And thinking of this, 
I feel the prospect change from country to town: I 
think how the human being, wearied out by many 
months of hard work amid city bustle and pressure, 



152 A REMINISCENCE OF 

leaves these behind ; how the little children shut up 
their school-books, and their tired instructors are off for 
their turn of much-needed recreation ; how the churches 
are emptied, and the streets deserted ; how the congre- 
gation, assembled in one place on the last Sunday of 
July, is before the next one scattered far and wide, like 
the fragments of a bursting bombshell. But it is not 
now, in this mid-term of work, that one can recall the 
feelings of commencing holiday-time. Meanwhile, you 
are out of sympathy with it ; and every good thing is 
beautiful in its time. 

Was it worth while thus to revive things so long past? 
It has been pleasant for the writer ; and a hundred 
things not recorded here have been awakened in the re- 
trospect. And when these pages meet the right people's 
eye, they may serve to recall simple modes of being and 
doing which are meltuig fast away. For the experience 
of ordinary mortals is remarkably uniform ; and most 
of the people you know are in many respects extremely 
like yourself. Now let us cease and sit down and think. 
There is indeed a temptation to go on. One would 
rather not stop in the middle of a page ; I mean a manu- 
script page ; and it is almost too much for human nature 
to know that we may add a few sentences more, and 
they will not be cut off. And there are positions too 
much for human nature. A sense of power and author- 
ity, as a general rule, is more than the average man 
can bear. Not long since I beheld, in the superhuman 
dignity of a policeman, something which deeply im- 
pressed this on my mind. The kitchen chimney of this 
dwelling caught fire. It is contrary to municipal law to 



THE OLD TIME. 153 

let your kitchen chimney catch fire, and very properly 
so ; so there was a fine to be paid. On a certain day I 
was told there was a policeman in the kitchen, who de- 
sired an interview. I proceeded thither and found him 
there. No language can convey an idea of the stern 
and unyielding severity of that eminent man's demean- 
or. He seemed to think I would probably plead with 
him to let Justice turn from' her rigid course ; and he 
souglit by his whole bearing to convey that any such 
pleading would be futile ; and that, whatever might be 
said, the half-crown must be paid, to be applied to public 
purposes. When I entered his presence, he sternly 
asked me what was my name. Of course he knew my 
name just as well as I did myself; but there was some- 
thing in the requirement fitted to make me feel my 
humble position before him. And having received the 
information, he made a note of it in a little book ; and, 
conveying that serious consequences would follow, he 
departed. A similar manifestation may be found in the 
case of magistrates in small authority. I have heard 
of such an individual who dispensed justice from a seedy 
little bench, with an awful state. He sat upon that 
bench all alone ; and no matter of the smallest im- 
portance ever came before him. Yet when expressing 
his opinion, he never failed to state that the Court 
thought so and so. A vague impression of dignity thus 
was made to surround the workings of the individual 
mind. It once befell, that certain youthful students, in a 
certain university, had a strife with the police ; and 
being captured by the strong arm of the law, were con- 
veyed before such a magistrate. Sitting upon the judg- 
ment seat, he sternly upbraided the youths for their 
7* 



154 REMINISCENCE OF THE OLD TIME. 

discreditible behaviour ; adding, that it gave him special 
sorrow to witness such lawless violence in the case of 
individuals who were receiving a university eddication. 
He did not know, that unhappy magistrate, that there 
stood at his bar one whose audacious heart quailed not 
in his presence. " Stop," exclaimed that unutterably 
irreverent youth, interrupting the stern magistrate; "let 
me entreat you to pronounce the word properly ; it is 
not EDDICATION, it is EDUCATION." And the magistrate's 
dignity suddenly collapsed, like a blown-up bladder when 
you insert a penknife. This incident is recorded to have 
happened at Timbuctoo, in the last century. I have no 
doubt the story is not true. Hardly any stories are true. 
Yet I have often heard it related. And like the legend 
of The Ass and the Archbishop, which is utterly without 
foundation, you feel that it ought to be true. 




CHAPTER IX 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 




T may be assumed as certain, that most read- 
ers of this page have on some occasion 
climbed a high hill. It may be esteemed 
as probable, that when half-way up, they felt 
out of breath and tired. It is extremely likely that, 
having come to some inviting spot, they sat down and 
rested for a little, before passing on to the summit. 
Now, my reader, if you have done all that, I feel assured 
that you must have remarked as a fact that, though 
when you sit down you cease to make progress, you do 
not go back. You do not lose the ground already 
gained. But if you ever think at all, even though it 
should be as little as possible, you must have discerned 
the vexatious truth that in respect of another and more 
important kind of progress, unless you keep going on, 
you begin to go back. You struggle, in a moral sense, 
up the steep slope ; and you sit down at the top, think- 
ing to yourself, "Now that is overcome." But after 
resting for a while you look round ; and lo ! insensibly 
you have been sliding down, and you are back again at 
the foot of the eminence you climbed with so much pain 
and toil. 



156 CONCEENING OLD ENEMIES. 

There are certain enemies with which every worthy- 
human being has to fight, as regards which you will feel, 
as you go on, that this principle holds especially true ; 
the principle that if you do not keep going forward, you 
will begin to lose ground and go backward. It is not 
enough to knock these enemies on the head for once. 
In your inexperienced days you will do this ; and then, 
seeing that they look quite dead, you will fancy they 
will never trouble you any more. But you will find 
out, to your painful cost, that those enemies of yours 
and mine must be knocked at the head repeatedly. 
One knocking, though the severest, will not suffice. 
They keep always reviving, and struggling to their feet 
again ; a little weak at first through the battering you 
gave them, but in a very short time as vigorous and 
mischievous as ever. The Frenchman, imperfectly ac- 
quainted with the force of English words, and eager 
that extremest vengeance should be wreaked on certain 
human foes, cried aloud, " Kill them very often " ! 
And that, my friend, as regards the worst enemies we 
have got, is precisely what you and I must do. 

If we are possessed of common sense to even a 
limited amount, we must know quite well who are our 
worst enemies. Not Miss Limejuice, who tells lies to 
make you appear a conceited, silly, and ignorant person. 
Nor Mr. Snarling, who diligently strives to prevent 
your reaching something you would like, because (as he 
says) the disappointment will do you good. Not the 
human curs that gnarr at your heels when you attain 
some conspicuous success or distinction ; which probably 
you worked hard for, and waited long for. Not these. 
"A man's foes," by special eminence and distinction, 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 157 

are even nearer him than " they of his own house : " a 
man's worst enemies are they of his own heart and soul. 
The enemies that do you most harm, and probably that 
cause yon most suffering, are tendencies and feelings in 
yourself. If all within the citadel were right, if the 
troop of thoughts and affections there were orderly and 
well-disposed and well-guided, we should be very in- 
dependent of the enemies outside. Outside temptation 
can never make a man do wrong till something inside 
takes it by the hand, and fraternizes with it, and sides 
with it. The bad impulse within must walk up arm in 
arm with the bad impulse from without, and introduce 
it to the will, before the bad impulse from without, how- 
ever powerful it may be, can make man or woman go 
astray from right. All this, however, may be taken for 
granted. What I wish to impress on the reader is this : 
that in fighting with these worst enemies, it is not 
enough for once to cut them down ; smash them, bray 
them in a mortar. If you were fighting with a Chinese 
invader, and if you were to send a rifle-bullet through 
his head, or in any other way to extinguish his life, you 
would feel that he was done with. You would have no 
more trouble from that quarter. But once shoot or 
slash the ugly beast which is called Envy, or SeJf- 
Conceit, or Unworthy Ambition, or Hasty Speaking, or 
general Foolishness, and you need not plume yourself 
that you will not be troubled any more with him. Let us 
call the beast by the general name of Besetting Sin; and 
let us recognize the fact, that though you never willingly 
give it a moment's quarter, though you smash in its 
head (in a moral sense) with a big stone, though you 
kick it (in a moral sense) till it seems to be lying quite 



158 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

lifeless, in a little while it will be up again as strong 
as ever. And the only way to keep it down is to knock 
it on the skull afresh every time it begins to lift up its 
ugly face. Or, to go back to my first figure : you have 
climbed, by a hard effort, up to a certain moral elevation. 
You have reached a position, climbing up the great 
ascent that leads towards God, at which you feel re- 
signed to God's will, and kindly disposed to all your 
fellow-creatures, even to such as have done you a bad 
turn already, and will not fail to do the like again. 
You also feel as if your heart were not set, as it once 
used to be, upon worldly aims and ends ; but as if you 
were really day by day working towards something 
quite different and a great deal higher. You feel hum- 
ble, patient, charitable. You sit down there, on that 
moral elevation, satisfied with yourself, and thinking to 
yourself. Now, I am a humble, contented, kindly, 
Cliristian human being ; and I am so for life. And let 
it be said thankfully, if you keep always on the alert, 
always watching against any retrogression, always with 
a stone ready to knock any old enemy on the head, 
always looking and seeking for a strength beyond your 
own, — you may remain all that for life. But if you 
grow lazy and careless, in a very little while you will 
Tiave glided a long way down the hill again. You will 
be back at your old evil ways. You will be eager to 
get on, and as set on this world as if this world were 
all, you will find yourself hitting hard the man who 
has hit you, envying and detracting from the man 
who has surpassed you, and all the other bad things. 
Or if you do not retrograde so far as that^ if you pull 
yourself up before the old bad impulse within you comes 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 159 

to actual bad deed8, still you will know that the old 
bad impulse within you is stirring, and that, by God's 
help, you must give it another stab. 

Now tliis is disheartening. When, by making a great 
effort, very painful and very long, you have put such a 
bad impulse down, it is very natural to think that it will 
never vex you any more. The dragon has been tram- 
pled under the horse's feet, its head has been cut off; 
surely you are done with it. You have ruled your spirit 
into being right and good ; into being magnanimous, 
kindly, humble. And then you fancied you might go 
ahead to something more advanced ; you had got over 
the Pons Asinorum in the earnest moral work of hfe. 
You have extirpated the wolves from your England, and 
now you may go on to destroy the moles. The wolves 
are all lying dead, each stabbed to the heart. You 
honestly believe that you had got beyond them, and that 
whatever new enemies may assail you, the old ones, at 
least, are done with finally. But the wolves get up 
again. The old enemies revive. 

I have sometimes wondered whether those men who 
have done much to help you and me in the putting down 
of our worst enemies, have truly and finally slain those 
enemies as far as concerns themselves. Is the man, in 
reading whose pages I feel I am subjected to a health- 
ful influence, that puts down the unworthy parts of my 
nature, and that makes me feel more kindly, magnani- 
mous, hopeful, and earnest than when left to myself, — is 
that man, I wonder, always as good himself as for the 
time he makes me ? Or can it be true that the man 
who seems not merely to have knocked on the head the 
lower impulses of his own nature, but to have done good 



160 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

to you and me, my friend, by helping to kill those im- 
pulses within us, has still to be fighting away with 
beasts, like St. Paul at Ephesus ; still to be lamenting, 
on many days, that the ugly faces of suspicion, jealousy, 
disposition to retaliate when assailed, and the like, keep 
wakening up and flying at him again ? I fear it is so. 
I doubt whether the human being lives in whom evil, 
however long and patiently trodden down, does not 
som'etimes erect its crest, and hiss, and need to be trod- 
den down again. Vain thoughts and fancies, long ex- 
tinguished, will waken up ; unworthy tendencies will 
give a push now and then. And especially I believe it 
is a great delusion to fancy that a man who writes in a 
healthy and kindly strain is what he counsels. If he be 
an honest and earnest man I believe that he is striving 
after that which he counsels, and that he is aiming at 
the spirit and temper which he sets out. I think I can 
generally make out what are a moral or religious writ- 
er's besetting sins, by remarking what are the virtues 
he chiefly magnifies. He is struggling after those 
virtues, struggling to break away from the correspond- 
ing errors and failings. If you find a man who in all 
he writes is scrupulously fair and temperate, it is proba- 
ble that he is a very excitable and prejudiced person, 
but that he knows it, and honestly strives against it. 
An author who always expresses himself with remark- 
able calmness is probably by nature a ferocious and 
savage man. But you may see in the way in which he 
restricts himself in the matter of adjectives, and in 
which he excludes the superlative degree, that he is 
making a determined effort to put down his besetting 
sin. And probably he fancies, quite honestly, that he 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 161 

has finally knocked that enemy on the head. The truth 
no doubt is, that it is because the enemy is still alive, 
and occasionally barking and biting, that it is kept so 
well in check. There is just enough of the old beast 
surviving to compel attention to it : the attention which 
consists in keeping a foot always on its head, and in oc- 
casionally giving it a vehement whack. The most emi- 
nent good qualities in human beings are generally formed 
by diligent putting down of the corresponding evil qual- 
ities. It was a stutterer who became the greatest 
ancient orator. It was a man who still bore on his 
satyr face the indications of his old satyr nature who 
became the best of heathens. And as with Socrates 
and Demosthenes, it has been with many more. If a 
man writes always very judiciously, rely upon it he has 
a strong tendency to foolishness ; but he is keeping it 
tight in check. If a man writes always very kindly 
and charitably, depend upon it he is fighting to the 
death a tendency to bitterness and uncharitableness. 

A faithful and eai'nest preacher, resolved to say no 
more than he has known and felt, and remembering the 
wise words of Dean Alford, " What thou hast not by 
suffering bought, presume thou not to teach," would 
necessarily show to a sharp observer a great deal of 
himself and his inner being, even though rigidly avoid- 
ing the slightest suspicion of egotism in his preaching ; 
and it need hardly be said that egotism is not to be tol- 
erated in the pulpit. 

After you have in an essay or a sermon described and 
condemned some evil tendency that is in human nature, 
you are ready to think that you have finally overcome 
it. And after you have described and commended some 

K 



162 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

good disposition, you are ready to think that you have 
attained it, and that you will not lose it again. And for 
the time, if you be an honest man, you have smashed the 
foe, you have gained the vantage ground. But, woe 's 
me, the good disj^osition dies away, and the foe gradual- 
ly revives and struggles to his legs again. Let us not 
fancy that because we have been (as we fancied) once 
right, we shall never go wrong. We must be always 
watchful. The enemy that seemed most thoroughly 
beaten may (apart from God's grace) beat us yet. The 
publican, when he went up to the temple to pray, ex- 
pressed himself in a fashion handed down to all ages 
with the imprijiiatur upon it. Yet, for all his speaking 
so fairly, the day might come when, having grown a re- 
formed character and gained general approbation, he 
would stand in a conspicuous place, and thank God that 
he was not as other men. Let us trust that day never 
came. Yet, if the publican had said to himself, as he 
went down to his house, Now I have attained an excel- 
lent pitch of morality ; I am all right ; I am a model 
for future generations, — that day would be very likely 
to come. 

It is a humiliating and discouraging sight to behold a 
man plainly succumbing to an enemy which you fancied 
he had long got over. You may have seen an individ- 
ual of more than middle age making a fool of himself 
by carrying on absurd flirtations with young girls, who 
were babies in long-clothes when he first was spoony. 
You would have said, looking at such a man's outward 
aspect, and knowing something of his history, that years 
had brought this compensation for what they had taken 
away, that he would not make a conspicuous ass of 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 163 

himself any more. But the old enemy is too much for 
him ; and O how long that man's ears would appear, if 
the inner ass could be represented outwardly ! You 
may have seen such a one, after passing through a dis- 
cipline which you would have expected to sober him, 
evincing a frantic exhilaration in the prospect of his 
third marriage. And you may have witnessed a per- 
son evincing a high degree of a folly he had unspar- 
ingly scourged in others. I have beheld, in old folk, 
manifestations of absurdity all very well in the very 
young, which suggested to me the vision of a stiff, 
spavined, lame, broken-down old hack, fit only for the 
knacker, trying to jauntily scamper about in a field with 
a set of spirited, fresh young colts. And looking at the 
spectacle, I have reflected on the true statement of the 
Venerable Bede, that there are no fools like old fools. 

But here it may be said, that we are not to suppose 
that a thing is wrong, unless it can bear to be looked 
back on in cold blood. Many a word is spoken, and 
many a deed done, and fitly too, in the warmth of the 
moment, which will not bear the daylight of a time 
when the excitement is over. Mr. Caudle was indignant 
when his wife reminded him of his sayings before mar- 
riage. They sounded foolish now in Caudle's ears. This 
did not suffice to show that those sayings were not very 
fit at the time ; nor does it prove that the tendency to 
say many things under strong feeling is an enemy to be 
put down. You have said, with a trembling voice, and 
with the tear in your eye, things which are no discredit to 
you, though you might not be disposed to say the like just 
after coming out of your bath in the morning. You 
needed to be warm.ed up to a certain pitch ; and then the 



164 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

spark was struck off. And only a very malicious or a 
very stupid person would remind you of these things 
when you are not in a correspondent vein. 

And now that we have had this general talk about 
these old enemies, let us go on to look at some of them 
individually. It may do us good to poke up a few of 
the beasts, and to make them arise and walk about in 
their full ugliness, and then to smite them on the head 
as with a hammer. Let this be a new slaying of the 
slain, who never can be slain too often. 

Perhaps you may not agree with me when I say that 
one of these beasts is Ambition. I mean unscrupulous 
self-seeking. You resolved, long ago, to give no harbor 
to that, and so to exclude the manifold evils that came 
of it. You determined that you would resolutely refuse 
to scheme, or push, or puff, or hide your honest opinions, 
or dodge in any way, for the purpose of getting on. You 
know how eager some people are to let their light shine 
before men, to the end that men may think what clever 
fellows those people are. You know how anxious some 
men are to set themselves right in newspapers and the 
like, and to stand fair (as they call it) with the public. 
You know how some men, when they do any good work, 
have recourse to means highly analogous to the course 
adopted by a class of persons long ago, who sounded a 
trumpet before them in the streets to call attention to 
their charitable deeds. I know individuals who con- 
stantly sound their own trumpet, and that a very brazen 
one, — sound it in conversation, in newspaper j^aragraphs, 
in advertisements, in speeches at public meetings. But 
you, an honest and modest person, were early disgusted 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 165 

by that kind of thing, and you determined that you 
would do your duty quietly and faithfully, spending all 
your strength upon your work, and not sparing a large 
per centage of it for the trumpet. You resolved that 
you would never admit the thought of setting yourself 
more favorably before your fellow-creatures. You learned 
to look your humble position in the face, and to discard 
the idea of getting any mortal to think you greater or 
better than you are. Yes, you hope that the petty self- 
seeking, which keeps some men ever on the strut and 
stretch, has been outgrown by you ; yet if you would be 
safe from one of the most contemptible foes of all moral 
manhood, you must keep your club in your hand, and 
every now and then quiet the creature by giving it a 
heavy blow on the head. St. Paul tells us that he had 
" learned to be content." It cost him effort. It cost him 
time. It was not natural. He came down, we may be 
sure, with many a heavy stroke on the innate disposition 
to repine when things did not go in the way he wanted 
them. And that is what we must do. 

As you look back now, it is likely enough that you 
recall a time when self-seeking seemed thoroughly dead 
in you. You were not very old, perhaps, yet you fancied 
that (by God's help) you had outgrown ambition. You 
did your work as well as you could, and in the evening 
you sat in your easy-chair by the fireside, looking not 
without interest at the feverish race of worldly compe- 
tition, yet free from the least thought of running in it. 
As for thinking of your own eminence, or imagining that 
any one would take the trouble of talking about you, 
that never entered your mind. And as you beheld the 
eager pushing of other men, and their frantic endeavors 



166 concp:rning old enemies. 

to keep themselves before the human race, you wondered 
what worldly inducement would lead you to do the like. 
But did you always keep in that happy condition ? Did 
you not, now and then, feel some little waking up of the 
old thing, and become aware that you were being drawn 
into the current ? If so, let us hope that you resolutely 
came out of it, and that you found quiet in the peaceful 
backwater, apart from that horrible feverish stream. 

There is another old enemy, a two-headed monster, 
that is not done with when it has been killed once. It 
is a near relative of the last : it is the ugly creature 
Self-Conceit and Envy. I call it a two-headed monster, 
rather than two monsters ; it is a double manifestation 
of one evil principle. Self-conceit is the principle as it 
looks at yourself ; Envy is the same thing as it looks at 
other men. I fear it must be admitted that there is in 
human nature a disposition to talk bitterly of people 
who are more eminent and successful than yourself, and 
though you expel it with a pitchfork, that old enemy 
will come back again. This disposition exists in many 
walks of life. A Lord Chancellor has left on record 
his opinion, that nowhere is there so much envy and 
jealousy as among the members of the English bar. 
A great actor has declared that nowhere is there so 
much as among actors and actresses. Several authors 
have maintained that no human beings are so bitter at 
seeing one of themselves get on a little, as literary folk. 
And a popular preacher has been heard to say that 
envy and detraction go their greatest length among 
preachers. Let us hope that the last statement is er- 
roneous. But I fear that these testimonies, coming 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 167 

from quarters so various, lead to the conclusion that 
envy and detraction (which imply self-conceit) are too 
natural and common everywhere. You may have 
heard a number of men talking about one man in their 
own vocation who had got a good deal ahead of them, 
and who never had done them any harm, except thus 
getting ahead of them ; and you may have been amazed 
at the awful animosity evinced towards the successful 
man. But success in others is a thing which some 
mortals cannot forgive. You may have known people 
savagely abuse a man because he set up a carriage, or 
because he moved to a finer house, or because he bought 
an estate in the country. You remember the outburst 
which followed when Macaulay dated a letter from 
Windsor Castle. Of course, the true cause of the out- 
burst was that Macaulay should have been at Windsor 
Castle at all. Let us be thankful, my friend, that such 
an eminent distinction is not likely to happen either to 
you or me ; we have each acquaintances who would 
never forgive us if it did. What a raking up of all 
the sore points in your history would follow, if the Queen 
were to ask you to dinner ! And if you should ever 
succeed to a fortune, what unspeakable bitterness would 
be awakened in the hearts of JMi*. Snarling and Miss 
Limejuice ! If their malignant glances could lame your 
horses as you drive by them with that fine new pair, the 
horses would limp home with great difficulty; and if 
their eyes could set your grand house on fire, imme- 
diately on the new furniture going in, a heavy loss would 
fall either upon you or the insurance company. 

But this will not do. As you read these lines, my 
friend, you picture yourself as tlie person who attains 



168 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

the eminence and succeeds to the fortune ; and you 
picture Miss Limejuice and Mr. Snarling as two of your 
neighbors. But what I desire is, that you should change 
the case ; imagine your friend Smith preferred before 
you, and consider whether there would not be some- 
thing of the Snarling tendency in yourself. Of course, 
you would not suffer it to manifest itself; but it is tliere, 
and needs to be put down. And it needs to be put down 
more than once. You will now and then be vexed and 
mortified to find that, after fancying you had quite made 
up your mind to certain facts, you are far from really 
having done so. Well, you must just try again. You 
must look for help where it is always to be found. And 
in the long run you will succeed. It will be painful, 
after you fancied you had weeded out self-conceit and 
envy from your nature, to find yourself some day talking 
in a bitter and ill-set way about some man or some woman 
whose real offence is merely having been more pros- 
perous than yourself. You thought you had got beyond 
that. But it is all for your good to be reminded that 
the old root of bitterness is there yet ; that you are 
never done with it ; that you must be always cutting it 
down. A gardener might as justly suppose that because 
he has mown down the grass of a lawn very closely to- 
day, the grass will never grow up and need mowing 
again, as we fancy that because we have unsparingly put 
down an evil tendency within us, we shall have no more 
trouble with it. 

Did nature give you, my friend, or education develope 
in you, a power of saying or writing severe things, 
which might stick into people as the little darts stick 
into the bull at a Spanish bull-fight? I believe that 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 169 

there are few persons who might not, if their heart 
would let them, acquire the faculty of producing dis- 
agreeable things, expressed with more or less of neatness 
and felicity. And in the case of the rare man here and 
there, who says his ill-set saying with epigrammatic 
point, like the touch of a rapier, the ill-setuess may be 
excused, because the thing is so gracefully said. We 
would not wish that tigers should be exterminated ; but 
it is to be desired that they should be very few. Let 
there be spared a specimen, here and there, of the grace- 
ful, agile,, ferocious savage. But you, my reader, were 
no great hand at epigrams, though you were ready 
enough with your ill-set remark ; and after some ex- 
perience, you concluded that there is something better in 
this world than to say things, however cleverly, that are 
intended to give pain. And so you determined to cut 
that off, and to go upon the kindly tack ; to say a good 
and cheering word whenever you had the opportunity ; 
to be ready with a charitable interpretation of what peo- 
ple do ; and never to utter or to write a word that could 
vex a fellow-creature, who (you may be sure) has quite 
enough to vex him without your adding anything. 
Perhaps you did all this, rather overdoing the thing. 
Ill-set people are apt to overdo the thing when they go 
in for kindliness and geniality. But some day, having 
met some little offence, the electricity that had been 
storing up during that season of repression, burst out in 
a flash of what may, by a strong figure, be called forked 
lightning; the old enemy had got the mastery again. 
And indeed a hasty temper, founding as it does mainly 
on irritability of the nervous system, is never quite got 
over. It may be much aggravated by yielding to it, 

8 



.170 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

and much abated by constant restraint ; but unless the 
beast be perpetually seen to, it is sure to be bursting 
out now and then. Socrates, you remember, said that 
his temper was naturally hasty and bad, but that phi- 
losophy had cured him. I believe it needs something 
much more efficacious than any human philosophy to 
work such a cure. No doubt, you may diligently train 
your^elf to see what is to be said in excuse of the 
offences given you by your fellow-creatures, and to 
look at the case as it appears from their point of view. 
This will help. But though ill-temper, left to its natural 
growth, will grow always worse, there is a point at 
which it has been found to mend. When the nervous 
system grows less sensitive through age, hastiness of 
temper sometimes goes. The old enemy is weakened ; 
the beast has been '(so to speak) hamstrung. You will 
be told that the thing which mainly impressed persons 
who saw the great Duke of Wellington in the last 
months of his hfe, was what a mild, gentle old man he 
was. Of course, every one knows that he was not 
always so. The days were, when his temper w^as hot 
and hasty enough. 

And thus thinking of physical influence, let us remem- 
ber that what is vulgarly called nervousness is an ene- 
my which many men know to their cost is not to be got 
over. The firmest assurance that you have done a 
thing many times, and so should be able to do it once 
more, may not suffice to enable you to look forward to 
doing it without a vague tremor and apprehension. 
There are human beings, all whose work is done with- 
out any very great nervous strain ; there are others in 
whose vocation there come many times that put their 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 171 

whole nature upon the stretch. And these times test a 
man. You know a horse may be quite lame, while yet 
it does not appear in walking. Trot the creature 
smartly, and the lameness becomes manifest. In like 
manner a man may be nervous, particular, crotchety, 
superstitious, while yet this may not appear till you trot 
him sharply. Put him at some work that must be done 
with the full stretch of his powers, and then you will 
see that he has got little odd ways of his own. I do 
not know what is the sensation of going into battle, 
and finding oneself under fire ; but short of that, I think 
the greatest strain to which a human being is usually 
subjected is that of the preacher. A little while ago, 
I was talking with a distinguished clergyman, and being 
desirous of comparing his experience with that of his 
juniors, I asked him, — 

1. Whether, in walking to church on Sunday to 
preach, he did not always walk on the same side of the 
street ? Whether he would not feel uncomfortable, and 
as if something were going wrong, if he made any 
change ? 

2. Whether when waiting in the vestry, the minute 
or two before the beadle should come to precede him 
into church, he did not always stand on the same spot ? 
Whether it would not put him out of gear, to vary from 
that? 

My eminent friend answered all these questions in- 
the affirmative. Of course there are a great many men 
to whom I should no more have thought of proposing 
such questions than I should think of proposing them to 
a rhinoceros. Such men, probably, have no little ways ; 
and if they had, they would not admit that they had. 



172 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

But my friend is so very able a man, and so very sin- 
cere a man, that he had no reason to be afraid of any 
one thinking him little, though he acknowledged to hav- 
ing his little fancies. And indeed, when you come to 
know people well, you will find that they have all ways 
that are quite analogous to Johnson's touching the tops 
of all the posts as he walked London streets. They 
would not exactly say, that they are afraid of anytliing 
happening to them if they deviated from the old track, 
but they think it just as well to keep on the safe side, 
by not deviating from it. 

Possibly there was a period in your hfe in which you 
had no objection to get into controversies upon political 
or religious subjects with other men ; which controver- 
sies gradually grew angry, and probably ended in mu- 
tual abuse, but assuredly not in conviction. But having 
remarked, in the case of other controversialists, what 
fools they invariably made of themselves; having re- 
marked their ludicrous exaggeration of the importance 
of their dispute, and the malice and disingeuuousness 
with which they earned on their debate (more espe- 
cially if they were clergymen) ; having remarked, in 
brief, how very little a controversialist ever looks like a 
Christian, — you turned, in loathing, from the whole 
thing, and resolved that you would never get into a con- 
troversy, public or private, with any mortal upon any 
subject any more. Stick to that resolution, my friend ; 
it is a good one. But you will occasionally be tempted to 
break it. Whenever the old enemy assails you, just think 
what a demagogue or agitator, political or religious, 
looks like in the eyes of all sensible and honest men ! 

Perhaps you had a tendency to be suspicious, and 



CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 173 

you have broken yourself of it. Perhaps your tempta- 
tion was to be easily worried by little cross-accidents, 
and to get needlessly excited. Perhaps your temptation 
was to laziness, to putting off duty till to-morrow, to 
untidiness, to moral cowardice. Whatever it was, my 
friend, never think yourself so cured of an evil habit, 
that you may cease to mow it down. If Demosthenes 
had left off attending to his speaking, he would have 
relapsed into his old evil ways. If St. Paul, after 
having learned to be content, had ceased to see to that, 
he would gradually have grown a grumbler. 

I am going to close this little procession of old 
enemies which has passed before our eyes by naming 
a large and general one. It is Folly. My friend, if 
you have attained to any measure of common sense 
now, you know what a tremendous fool you were once. 
If you do not know that, then you are a fool still. Ah, 
reader, wise and good, you know all the weakness, the 
silliness, the absurd fancies and dreams, that have been 
yours. I presume that you are ready to give up a great 
part of your earlier life : you have not a word to say 
for it. All your desire is that it should in charity be 
forgotten. But surely you will not now make a fool 
of yourself any more. There shall be no more now of 
the hasty talking, the vaj^oring about your own impor- 
tance, the idiotic sayings and doings you wish you could 
bury in Lethe ; and which you may be very sure certain 
of your kind friends carefully remember and occasionally 
recall. But now and then the logic of facts will con- 
vince you that the old enemy is not quite annihilated 
yet, and you say something you regret the moment it is 
uttered; you do something which indicates that you 
have lost your head for the time. 



174 CONCERNING OLD ENEMIES. 

Let it be said, in conclusion, as the upshot of the 
whole matter, that the wise man will never think he is 
safe till he has reached a certain place where no enemy 
can assail him more. I beg my friend Mr. Snarling to 
take notice, that I do not pretend to have pointed out 
in these pages the worst of those old enemies that get 
up again and run at us after they had been knocked on 
the head once, and more than once. 

If this had been a sermon, I should have given you a 
very different catalogue, and one that would have 
awakened more serious thoughts. Not but that those 
which have been named are well worth thinking of. 
The day will never come, in this world, on which it will 
be safe for us to sit down in perfect security, and to say 
to ourselves, now we need keep no watch ; we may (in 
a moral sense) draw the charge from our revolver be- 
cause it will not be needed ; we may fall asleep, and 
nothing will meddle with us the while. For all around 
us, my friend, are the old enemies of our souls and our 
salvation ; some aiming at nothing more than to make 
us disagreeable and repulsive, petty and jealous ; others 
aiming at nothing less than to make us unfit for the only 
home where we can know perfect rest and peace ; some 
stealing upon us more stealthily, silently, fatally, than 
ever the Indian crept through the darkness of night 
upon the traveller nodding over his watch-fire ; some 
coming down upon us, strong and sudden as the tiger's 
agile spring. Well, we know what to do : we must 
watch and pray. And the time will come at length 
when the pack of wolves shall be lashed off for ever ; 
when the evil within us shall be killed outright, and 
beyond all reviving ; and when the evil around us shall 
be gone. 



CHAPTER X. 

AT THE CASTLE: WITH SOME THOUGHTS ON 
MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 



Gj^^f^lG 


1 



^OT on a study-table in a back parlor in a 
great city shall these little blue pages be 
covered with written characters. Every 
word shall be written in the open air. The 
page shall be lighted by sunshine that comes through 
no glass, but which is tempered by coming through 
masses of green leaves. And this essay is not to be 
composed ; not to be screwed out, to use the figure of 
Mr. Thackeray ; not to b^ pumped out, to use the figure 
«f Festus. It shall grow without an effort. When any 
thought occui*s, the pencil shall note it down. No 
thought shall be hurried in its coming. 

You know how after a good many months of constant 
work, with the neck always at the collar, you grow 
wearied and easily worried. Little things become 
burdensome ; and the best of work is felt as a task. 
You cannot reason yourself out of that ; ten days' rest 
is the thing that will do it. Be thankful if then you 
can have such a season of quiet in as green and shady 
a nook of country as mortal eyes could wish to see ; in 
a nook like this, amid green grass and green trees, and 



176 AT THE CASTLE : 

the wild flowers of the early summer. For this is little 
more than midway in the pleasant month of May. 

It is a very warm, sunshiny morning. This is a little 
open glade of rich grass, lighted up with daisies and 
buttercups. The little glade is surrounded by large 
forest-trees ; under the trees there is a blaze of prim- 
roses and wild hyacinths. A soft west wind, laden 
with the fragrance of lilac and apple blossoms, wakes 
the gentlest of sounds (in a more expressive language 
than ours it would have been called susurrus) in the 
topmost branches, gently swaying to and fro. The 
swaying branches cast a flecked and dancing shadow on 
the grass below. Midway the little glade is beyond "the 
shadow ; and there the grass, in the sunbeams, has a 
tinge of gold. A river runs by, with a ceaseless mur- 
mur over the warm stones. Look to the right hand, 
and there, over the trees, two hundred yards off, you 
may see a gray and red tower motionless above 'the 
waving branches ; and lower down, hardly surmounting 
the wood, a stretch of mas^ve wall, with huge but- 
tresses. Tower and wall crown a lofty knoll, whiok 
the river encircles, making it a peninsula. Wallflower 
grows in the crannies ; a little wild apple-tree, covered 
with white blossoms, crowns a detached fragment of a 
ruined gateway ; sweetbrier grows at the base of the 
ancient walls ; ivy and honeysuckle climb up them ; and 
where great fragments of fallen wall testify to the excel- 
lence of the mortar of the eleventh century, wild roses 
have rooted themselves in masses, which are now only 
gi-een. That is The Castle, all that can be seen of it 
from this point. There is more to be said of it here- 
after. Hard by this spot, two little children are sitting 
on the grass, to whom some one is reading a story. 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 177 

The wise man will never weary of looking at green 
grass and green trees. It is an unspeakable refresh- 
ment to the eye and the mind ; and the daily pressure 
of occupation cannot touch one here. One wonders that 
human beings who always live amid such scenery do 
not look more like it. But some people are utterly 
unimpressionable by the influences of outward scenery. 
You may know men who have lived for many years 
where Nature has done her best with wood and rock 
and river ; and even when you become well acquainted 
with them, you cannot discover the faintest trace in 
their talk or in their feeling of the mightily powerful 
touch (as it would be to many) which has been unceas- 
ingly laid upon them through all that time. Or you 
may have beheld a vacuous person at a picnic party, 
who, amid traces of God's handiwork that should make 
men hold their breath, does but pass from the occupation 
of fatuously flirting with a young woman like himself, to 
furiously abusing the servants for not sufiiciently cooling 
the wine. 

A great many of the highly respectable people, we 
all know, are entirely in the case of the hero of that 
exquisite poem of Wordsworth's, which Jeffrey never 
could bring himself to like : — 

" But Natnre ne'er could find her way 
Into the heart of Peter BeU. 

" In vain, through every changing year, 

Did Nature lead him as before ; 
A primrose by a river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 

And it was nothing more." 

A human being ought to be very thankful if his dis- 

8* L 



178 AT THE CASTLE: 

position be such that he heartily enjoys green grass and 
green trees ; for there are clever men who do not. In 
a little while I shall tell you of an extraordinary and 
anomalous taste expressed on that subject by one of the 
cleverest men I know. If a man has a thousand a 
year, and his next neighbor five hundred, and if the 
man with five hundred makes his income go just as far 
as the larger one (and an approximation to doing so 
may be made by good management), it is plain that 
these two mortals are, in respect to income, on the same 
precise footing. The poorer man gets so much more 
enjoyment out of his yearly revenue as makes up for 
the fact that the richer man's revenue is twice as great. 
There is a hke compensation provided for the lack of 
material advantages in the case of many men, through 
their intense appreciation of the beauty of natural 
scenery, and of very simple things. * A rich man- may 
possess the acres, with their yearly rental; a poor 
man, such as a poet, a professor, a schoolmaster, a cler- 
gyman, or the like, may possess the landscape which 
these acres make up, to the utter exclusion of the landed^ 
proprietor. Perhaps, friendly reader, God has not given 
you the earthly possessions which it has pleased Him 
to give to some whom you know, but He may have 
given you abundant recompense by giving you the power 
of getting more enjoyment out of little things than many 
other men. You live in a little cottage, and your neigh- 
bor in a grand castle ; you have a small collection of 
books, and your neighbor a great one of fine editions in 
sumptuous bindings and in carved oak cases ; yet you 
may have so great delight in your snug house, and your 
familiar volumes, that in regard of actual enjoyment you 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAmLIAR SPIRIT. 179 

may be the more enviable man. A green field with a 
large oak in the middle, a hedge of blossoming haw- 
thorn, a thatched cottage under a great maple, twenty 
square yards of velvety turf, — how really happy such 
things can make some simple folk ! 

Of course it occurs to one that the same people who 
get more enjoyment out of little pleasures will get more 
suffering out of anything painful. Because your tongue 
is more sensitive than the palm of your hand, it is aware 
of the flavor of a pineapple which your palm would 
ignore, but it is also liable to know the taste of assa- 
foetida, of w^hich your palm would be unconscious. The 
supersensitive nervous system is finely strung to discern 
pain as well as pleasure. No one knows, but the over- 
particular person, what a pure misery it is to go into an 
untidy room, if it be your own. There are people who 
suifer as much in having a tooth filed as others in losing 
a limb. A Frenchman, some years since, committed 
suicide, leaving a written paper to say he had done so 
because life was rendered unendurable through his being 
so much bitten by fleas. This is not a thing to smile at. 
That poor man, before his reason was upset, had proba- 
bly endured torments of which those around had not 
the faintest idea. I have heard a good man praised for 
the patience with which he bore daily for weeks the 
surgeon's dressing of a very severe wound. The good 
man was thought heroic. I knew him well enough to 
be sure that the fact was that his nature was dull and 
slow. He did not suffer as average men would have 
suffered under that infliction. There are human beings 
in touching whose moral nature you feel you are touch- 
ing the impenetrable skin of the hippopotamus. There 



180 AT THE CASTLE: 

are human beings in touching whose moral nature you 
feel you are touching the bare tip of a nerve. Eager, 
anxious men are prone to envy imperturbable and slow- 
moving men. My friend Smith, who is of an eager 
nature, tells me he looks with a feeling a few degrees 
short of veneration on a massive-minded and immovable 
being, who in telling a story makes such long pauses at 
the end of each sentence that you fancy the story done. 
Then poor Smith breaks in hastily with something he 
wants to say, but the massive-minded man, not noticing 
him, continues his parable till he pauses again at the 
end of another sentence. And Smith is made to feel as 
though he were very young. 

I have said that likings vary in regard to such mat- 
ters as the enjoyment of this scene. O this green grass, 
rich, unutterably green, with the buttercups and daisies, 
with the yellow broom and the wild bees, and the en- 
vironment of bright leafy trees that inclose you round ; 
to think that there are people who do not care for you ! 
It was but yesterday, in a street of a famous and beauti- 
ful city, I met my friend Mr. Keene. Keene is a warm- 
hearted, magnanimous, unselfish, brave, out-spoken hu- 
man being, as fine a fellow as is numbered among the 
clergy of either side of the Tweed. Besides these things, 
he is an admirable debater ; fluent, ready, eloquent, 
hearty, fully persuaded that he is right, and that his 
opponents are invariably wrong, and not without some 
measure of smartness and sharpness in expression. 
Keene approached me with a radiant face, the result 
partly of inherent good nature, and partly of a very hot 
summer day. He had come to the city to take part in 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 181 

the debates of the great ecclesiastical council of a north- 
ern country. I was coming to this place. He was 
entering the city, in fact, for many days of deliberation 
and debate ; I was departing from it for certain days of 
rest and- recreation. I could not refrain from displaying 
some measure of exultation at the contrast between our 
respective circumstances. " I shall be lying to-morrow," 
I said, "on green grass under green trees, while you 
will be existing " (the word used indeed was stewing) 
" in that crowded building, with its feverish atmosphere 
highly charged with carbonic-acid gas." To these words 
Keene replied, with simple earnestness : " I shall be quite 
happy there ; I don't care a straw for green grass and 
green leaves ! " Such was the sentiment of that eminent 
man. I pity him sincerely ! 

Here I paused, and thought for a little of the great 
ecclesiastical council and of lesser ecclesiastical coun- 
cils, and the following reflection suggested itself : — 

Our good principles are too often like Don Quixote's 
helmet. We arrive at them in leisure, in cool blood, 
with an un excited brain, which is commonly called a 
clear head ; then in actual life they too commonly fail at 
the first real trial. Don Quixote made up his helmet 
carefully with a visor of pasteboard. Then, to ascertain 
whether it was strong enough, he dealt it a blow with 
his sword; thereupon it went to pieces. 

In like manner, in our better and more thoughtful 
hours, we resolve to be patient, forgiving, charitable, 
kind-spoken, unsuspicious, — in short Christian, for that 
includes all, — and the first time we are irritated we fail. 
"We grow very angry at some small offence ; we speak 



182 AT THE CASTLE : 

harshly, we act unfairly. I have heard a really good 
man preach. Afterwards I heard hira speak in a lesser 
ecclesiastical council. He preached (so far as the senti- 
ments expressed went) like an angel. He argued like 
just the reverse. 

Ah, we make up our helmets with pasteboard. We 
resolve that henceforth we shall act on the most noble 
principles. And the helmets look very well so long as 
they are not put to the test. We fancy ourselves chari- 
table, forgiving. Christian people, so long as we are not 
tried. A stroke with a sword, and the helmet goes to 
tatters. An attack on us, a reflection on us, a hint that 
we ever did wrong, and oh, the wretched outburst of 
wrath, bitterness, unfairness, mahgnity ! 

Of course, the best of men, as it has been said, are 
but men at the best. Let us be humble. Let there be 
no vain self-confidence ; and especially let us, entering 
on every scene that can possibly try us, (and when do 
we escape from such a scene ?) earnestly ask the guid- 
ance of that Blessed Si3irit of Whom is every good feel- 
ing and purpose in us, and without Whom our best 
resolutions will snap like reeds just when they are 
needed most to stand firm. 

There is more to be said about the Castle. It is not a 
castle to which you go that you may enjoy the society 
of dukes and other nobles, such as form the daily asso- 
ciates of the working clergy. By the payment of a 
moderate weekly stipend, this castle may become yours. 
The castle is in ruins ; but a little corner amid the 
great masses of crumbling stones, which were placed 
here by strong hands dead for eight hundred years, has 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 183 

been patched up so as to make an unpretending little 
dwelling ; and there you may- find the wainscotted 
rooms, the quaint panelled ceiHngs of mingled timber 
and plaster, the winding turret stairs, the many secret 
doors, of past centuries. The castle stands on a lofty 
promontory of no great extent, which a little river en- 
circles on two sides, and which a deep ravine cuts off 
from the surrounding country on the other two sides. 
You approach the castle over an arch of seventy feet in 
height, which spans the ravine. In former days it was 
a drawbridge. The bridge runs out of the inner court 
of the castle ; midway in its length it turns off at almost 
a right angle, till it joins the bank on the other side of 
the ravine. That little bridge makes a charming place 
to walk on, and it is a great deal longer than any quar- 
ter-deck. It is all grown over with masses of ancient 
ivy, the fragrance of a sweetbrier hedge in the castle 
court pervades it at present ; you look down from it upon 
a deep glen, through w^hich the little river flows. The 
tops of the tall trees are far beneath you ; there are 
various plane-trees with their thick leaves. Wherever 
you look, it is one mass of rich foliage. Trees fill up 
the ravine, trees clothe the steep bank on the other side 
of the river, trees have rooted themselves in wonderful 
spots in the old walls, trees clothe the ascent that leads 
from the castle to that little summit near, crowned with 
one of the loveliest creations of the Gothic architect's 
skill. That is the chancel of a large church, of which 
only the chancel was ever built ; and if you would behold 
a little chapel of inexpressible perfection and beauty, if 
you would discern the traces of the faithful and loving 
toil of men who have been for hundreds of years in 



184 AT THE CASTLE : 

tlieir graves, if you would look upon ancient stones that 
seem as if they had grown and blossomed like a tree, 
then find out where that chapel is, and go and see it. 

But you pass over the bridge ; and under a ruined 
gateway, where part of a broken arch hangs over the 
passer-by, you enter the court. On the right hand, 
ruined walls of vast thickness. The like on the left 
band, but midway there is the little portion that is habi- 
table. Enter : pass into a pretty large wainscotted par- 
lor ; look out of the windows on the further side. You 
are a hundred feet above the garden below, — for on that 
side there is below you story after story of low-browed 
chambers, arched in massive stone, and lower still, the 
castle wall rises from the top of a precipice of perpen- 
dicular rock. On the further side from the river, the 
chambers are hewn out of the living stone. What a 
view from the window of that parlor first mentioned ! 
Beneath, the garden, bright now with blossoming apple- 
trees, bounded by the river, and, beyond the river, a 
bank of wood three hundred feet in height. A little 
window in a corner looks down the course of the stream ; 
there is a deep dell of wood, one thick luxuriance of fo- 
liage, with here and there the gleam of the flowing water. 

This is our place of rest. Add to all that has been 
said an inexpressible sense of a pervading quiet. 

Do you find, when you come to a place where you are 
to have a brief holiday, a tendency to look back on the 
work you have been doing, and to estimate what it has 
come to after all? And have you found, even after 
many months of grinding as hard as you could, that it 
w^as mortifying to see how little was the permanent re- 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 185 

suit ? Such seems to be the effect of looking back on 
work. One thinks of a case parallel to the present feel- 
ing. There was Jacob, looking back on a long life, on 
a hundred and twenty years, and saying, sincerely, that 
his days had been few and evil. Now, in a blink of 
rest, my friend, look back on the results you have ac- 
complished in those months of hard work. You thought 
them many and good at the time, now they seem to be 
no better than few and evil. It is humiliating to think 
how little permanent result is got by a working day. 
To bring things to book, to actually count and weigh 
them, always makes them look less. You may remem- 
ber a calculation made by the elder Disraeli, as to the 
amount of matter a man could read in a lifetime. It is 
very much less than you would have thought, — perhaps 
one tenth of what an ordinary person would guess. 
Thackeray, in his days of matured and practised power, 
thought it a good day's work to write six of the little 
pages of Esmond. A distinguished and experienced 
author told me that he esteemed three pages of the 
Quarterly Review a good day's work. Some men judge 
a sermon, which can be given in little more than half 
an hour, a sufficient result of the almost constant thought 
of a week. Six little pages, as the sole abiding result 
of a day on which the sun rose and set, and the clock 
went the round of the four-and-twenty hours, — on 
which you took your bath, and your breakfast, and read 
your newspaper, and in short went through the round 
of employments which make your habitude of being. 
Six pages, — skimmed by the reader in five minutes ! 
The truth is, that a great part of our energy goes just 
to bear the burden of the day, to do the work of the 



186 AT THE CASTLE : 

time, and we have only the little surplus of abiding 
possession. The way to keep ourselves from getting 
mortified and disheartened when we look back on the 
remaining result of all our work, is to remember that we 
are not here merely to work, — merely to produce that 
which shall be an abiding memorial of us. It is well if 
all we do and bear is forming our nature and character 
into something which we can willingly take with us 
when we go away from this life. 

This morning after breakfast I was sitting on the par- 
apet of the bridge already mentioned, looking down upon 
the tops of two plane-trees, and feeling a great deal the 
better for the sight. I believe it does good to an ordi- 
nary mortal to look down on the top of a large tree, and 
see the branches gently waving about. Little outward 
phenomena have a wonderful effect in soothing and re- 
freshing the mind. Some men say the sight and sound of 
the sea calms and cheers them. You know how when 
a certain old prophet was beaten and despairing, the 
All-wise thought it would be good for him to behold 
certain sublime manifestations of the power of the Al- 
mighty. We cannot explain the rationale of the pro- 
cess, but these things do us good. A wise and good 
and most laborious man told me that when he feels over- 
worked and desponding, he flies away to Chamouni and 
looks at Mont Blanc, and in a few days he is set right. 
It was not a fanciful man who said that there is scenery 
in this world that would soothe even remorse. And for 
an ordinary person, not a great genius and not a great 
ruffian, give us a lofty bridge whence you may look 
down upon a great plane-tree. 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 187 

All this, however, is a deviation. Sitting on the 
bridge and enjoying the scene, this thought arose : 
Greatly as one enjoys and delights in this, what would 
the feeling be if one were authoritatively commanded to 
remain in this beautiful place, doing nothing, for a 
month ? And one could not but confess that the feel- 
ing would not be pleasant. The things you enjoy most 
intensely you enjoy for but a short time, then you are 
satiated. When parched with thirst, what so delightful 
as the first draught of fair water ? But if you were 
compelled to drink a fourth and fifth tumbler, the water 
would become positively nauseous. So is it with rest. 
You enjoy it keenly for a little while, but constrained 
idleness, being prolonged, would make you miserable. 
Ten days here are delightful ; then back, with fresh ap- 
petite and vigor, to the dear work. But a month here, 
thus early in the year, would, be a fearful infliction. 
You have not earned the autumn holidays as yet. 

It is in human nature, that when you feel the pres- 
sure of anything painfully, you fancy that the opposite 
thing would set you right. When you are extremely 
busy and distracted by a host of things demanding 
thought, you think that pure idleness would be pleasant. 
So, in boyhood, on a burning summer day, you thought 
it would be delicious to feel cold. You went to bathe 
in the sea, and you found it a great deal too cold. 

Charles Lamb, for a great part of his life, was kept 
very busy at uncongenial work. Oftentimes, through 
those irksome hours, he thought how pleasant it would 
be to be set free from that work forever. So he said 
th^t if he had a son, the son should be called Nothing 
TO DO, and he should do nothing. Of course, Elia 



188 AT THE CASTLE : 

spoke only half-seriously. We know what he meant. 
But, in sober earnest, we can all gee that Nothing to 
DO would have been a miserable as well as a wicked 
man. He would assuredly have grown a bad fellow ; 
and he would just as surely have been a wretched 
being. 

Every one knows the story of Michael Scott and his 
Familiar Spirit. Of late I have begun to understand 
the meaning of that story. 

Michael Scott, it is recorded, had a Familiar Spirit 
under his charge. We do not know how JMichael Scott 
first got possession of that Spirit. Probably he raised 
it, and then could not get rid of it : like the man who 
begged Dr. Log to propose a toast, and then Dr. Log 
spoke for three quarters of an hour. Michael Scott 
had to provide employment for that being, on pain of 
being torn in pieces. Michael gave the Spirit very 
difficult things to do. They were done with terrible 
ease and rapidity. The three peaks of the Eildon Hills 
were formed in a single night. A weir was built across 
the Tweed in a like time. Michael Scott was in a ter- 
rible state. In these days, he would probably have 
desired the Spirit to make and lay the Atlantic Tele- 
graph Cable. But a happy thought struck him. He 
bade his Familiar make a rope of sea-sand. Of course, 
this provided unlimited occupation. The thing could 
never be finished. And the wizard was all right. 

These things are an allegory. Michael Scott's Fa- 
miliar Spirit is your own mind, my friend. Your own 
mind demands that you find it occupation ; and if you 
do not, it will make you miserable. It is an awful 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 189 

thing to have nothing to do. The mill within you de- 
mands grist to grind ; and if you give it none, it still 
grinds on, as Luther said ; but it is itself it grinds and 
wears away. My friend Smith, having overworked his 
eyes at college, was once forbid to read or write for 
eighteen months. It was a horrible penance at first. 
But he de\dsed ways of giving the machine work ; and 
during that period of enforced idleness, he acquired the 
power of connected thinking without writing down each 
successive thought. Few people have that power. One of 
the rarest of all acquirements is the faculty of profitable 
meditation. Most human beings, when they fancy they 
are meditating, are in fact doing nothing at all, and 
thinking of nothing. 

You will remember what was once said by a lively 
French writer, — that we commonly think of idleness as 
one of the beatitudes of heaven.; while we ought rather 
to think of it as one of the miseries of hell. It was an 
extreme way which that writer took of testifying to the 
tormenting power of ]Michael Scott's Familiar Spirit. 

And one evil in this matter is, that it is just the men 
who lead the most active and useful lives, who are 
making Mchael Scott's Spirit more insatiable. You give 
it abundance to do ; and so when work is cut off from 
it, it becomes rampageous. You lose the powder of sitting 
still and doing nothing. You find it inexpressibly irk- 
some to travel by railway for even half an hour, with 
nothing to read. For the most handy way of pacifying 
the Spii-it is to give it something to read. People teU 
you how disgusting it was when they had to wait for three 
quarters of an hour for the train at some Uttle country 
railway station. Michael Scott's Spirit was worrying 



190 AT THE CASTLE : 

and tormenting them, being kept without employment 
for that time. You know to what shifts people will 
have recourse, rather than have the Familiar Spirit 
coming and tormenting them. To give grist to the mill, 
to provide the Familiar Spirit with something to do, on 
a railway journey of twelve hours, they will read all 
the advertisements in their newspaper : they will go 
back a second and a third time over all the news ; they 
will even diligently peruse the leading article of the 
JMtle Pedlington Gazette. They read the advertisements 
in Bradshaw. They try to make out, from that publica- 
tion, how to reach, by many corresponding trains, some 
little cross-country place to which they never intend 
to go. Anything rather than be idle. Anything rather 
than lean back, quite devoid of occupation, and feel 
the Familiar Spirit worrying away within, as Prome- 
theus felt the vulture at his liver. When I hear a young 
fellow say of some country place where he has been 
spending some time, that it is a horribly slow place, that 
it is the deadest place on earth, I am aware that he did 
not find occupation there for IMichael Scott's Familiar 
Spirit. 

One looks with interest at people in whose case that 
Spirit seems to have been lulled into torpidity, has been 
brought to what a practical philosopher called a dor- 
mouse state. I read last night in a book how somebody 
" leant his cheek on his hand and gazed abstractedly into 
the fire." One who has trained the Familiar Spirit to 
an insatiable appetite for work can hardly believe such 
a thing possible. You may remember a picture m a 
volume of the illustrated edition of the Waverley Novels, 
which represents a plump old abbot, sitting satisfied in a 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 191 

large chair, with the h'ght of the fire on his face, doing 
nothing, thinking of nothing, and quite tranquil and 
content. One sometimes thinks, Would we could do 
the like ! That fat, stupid old abbot had led so idle a 
life that the muscular power of the Familiar Spirit was 
abated, and its craving for work gone. 

Wlien you are wearied with long work, my reader, 
I wish you may have a place like this to which to come 
and rest. How good and pleasant it is for a little 
while ! Your cares and burdens fall oflf from you. 
How insignificant many thmgs look to one, sitting on this 
green grass, or looking over this bridge down into the 
green dell, that worried one in the midst of duty ! If 
3'ou were out in a hurricane at sea, and your boat got 
at last into a little sheltered cove, you would be glad 
and thankful. But only for a short time. In a little, 
you would be weary of staying tliere. We are so made 
that we cannot for any length of time remain quiescent 
and do nothing. And we cannot live on the past. The 
Familiar Spirit will not chew the cud, so to speak; you 
must give him fresh provender to grind. Perhaps there 
have been days in your life which were so busy with 
hard work, so alive with what to you were great inter- 
ests, so happy with a bewildering bliss, that you fan- 
cied you would be able to look back on them and to 
live in them all your life, and they would be a posses- 
sion for ever. Not so. It is the present on which we 
must live. You can no more satisfy Michael Scott's 
Spirit with the remembrance of former occupations and 
enjoyments than you can allay your present hunger with 
the remembrance of beef-steaks brought you by the 
plump head-waiter at " The Cock," half a dozen years 



192 AT THE CASTLE : 

ago. Each day must bring its work, or the Spirit will 
be at you and stick pins into you. 

A power of falling asleep enables one to evade the 
Spirit. At night, going to bed, looking for a sleepless 
night, how many a man has said, Oh for forgetfulness ! 
When you have escaped into that realm, the Spirit can 
trouble you no more. You know the wish which Hood 
puts on the lips of Eugene Aram, tortured by an unen- 
durable recollection, that he could shut his mind and 
clasp it with a clasp, as he could close his book and 
clasp it. Few men are more to be envied than those 
who have this power. Napoleon had it. So had the 
Duke of AVellington. At any moment either of these 
men could escape into a region where they were entirely 
free from the pressure of those anxieties which weighed 
them down while awake. Once the Duke, with his 
aide-de-camp, came galloping up to a point of the Brit- 
ish lines whence an attack was to be made. He was 
told the guns would not be ready to open for two hours. 
" Then," said he, " we had better have a sleep." He sat 
down in a trench, leant his back against its side, and 
was fast asleep in a minute. That great man could at 
any time escape from Michael Scott's Spirit ; could get 
into a country where the Spirit could not follow him. 
For in dreamless sleep you escape from yourself. 

I have been told that there is another means of lulling 
that insatiable being into a state in which it ceases to 
be troublesome and importunate. It is tobacco. Some 
men say that the smoking of that fragrant weed soothes 
them into a perfect calm, in which they are pleasurably 
conscious of existing, but have no wish to do anything. 
Let me confess, notwithstandinj;, that I esteem smokinor 



MICHAEL SCOTT'S FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 193 

as one of the most offensive and selfish of the lesser 
sins. "When I see smoke pouring out of the window 
of a railway carriage not specially allotted to smokers, 
I go no farther for evidence that that carriage is occu- 
pied by selfish snobs. 

Young children have Michael Scott's Familiar Spirit 
to find employment for, just as much as their seniors. 
Who does not yet remember the horrible feeling which 
you expressed when a child by saying you had nothing 
to do 2 I have just heard a little thing say to his moth- 
er, " Read me a story to make the time pass quick." 
That was his way of saying, " to pacify the Familiar 
Spirit." And we talk of killing Time, as though he 
were an enemy to be reduced to helplessness. There is 
an offensive phrase which sets all the idea more dis- 
tinctly. There are silly fellows who ask you what 
o'clock it is by saying, ^^ JIow goes the enemy V This 
phrase indeed suggests thoughts too solemn and awful 
for this page. Let me ask, in a word, if Time be such, 
how about Eternity ? But in every such case as those 
named, the enemy is not Time. It is Michael Scott's 
Familiar Spirit demanding occupation. How fast Time 
goes, when the Spirit is pleasantly or laboriously em- 
ployed ! When people talk of killing Time, they mean 
knocking that strange being on the head, so to speak ; 
stunning it for the hour. That may be done, but it is 
soon up again, importunate as ever. 

I suppose, my reader, that you can remember times 
in which the face you loved best looked its sweetest; 
and tones, pleasanter than all the rest, of the voice that 
was always pleasantest to hear ; thoughtful looks of the 

9 M 



194 AT THE CASTLE. 

little child you seek in vain in the man in whom you 
lost it ; and smiles of the little child that died. Touched 
as with the light of eternity, these things stand forth 
amid the years of past time ; they are as the mountain 
tops rising over the mists of oblivion ; they are the pos- 
sessions which will never pass your remembrance till 
you cease to remember at all. And you know that 
Nature too has her moments of special transfiguration ; 
times when she looks so fair and sweet that you are 
compelled to think that she would do well enough (for 
all the thorns and thistles of the Fall), if you could but 
get quit of the ever-intruding blight of sin and sorrow. 
Sucii a season is this bright morning, with its sunshine 
that seems to us (in our ignorance) fair and joyous 
enough for that place where there is no night ; with its 
leaves green and living (would they but last) as we can 
picture of the Tree of Life ; wdth its cheerful quiet that 
is a little foretaste of the perfect rest which shall last 
forever. It is very nearly time to go back to work, but 
we shall cherish this remembrance of the place ; and so 
it will be green and sunshiny through winter da3^s. 





CHAPTER :^I. 

CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK; WITH SOME 
THOUGHTS ON THE WRONG TACK. 

OT many days since, I was walking along a 
certain street, in a certain city ; and there I 
beheld two little boys of the better sort 
fighting furiously. There are people, claim- 
ing to be what is vulgarly called Muscular Christians, 
who think that a certain amount of fighting among boys 
is to be very much encouraged, as a thing tending to 
make the little fellows manly and courageous. For my- 
self, I believe that God's law is wise as well as right; 
and I do not believe that angry passion (which God's 
law condemns), or that vindictive efforts to do mischief 
to a fellow-creature (which God's law ^Iso condemns), 
are things which deserve to be in any way encouraged, 
or are things likely to develop in either man or boy the 
kind of character which wise and good people would 
wish to see. Accordingly I interposed in the fight, and 
sought to make peace between the little men ; support- 
ing my endeavors by some general statement to the 
effect that good boys ought not to be fighting in that 
way. They stopped at once : no doubt both had had 
enough of that kind of thing. For one had a bloody 



196 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

nose, and the other had a rudimentary black eye, which 
next morning would be manifest. But one of them 
defended himself against the charge of having done 
anything wrong, by saying, with the energy of one who 
was quite assured that he had the principles of eternal 
justice on his side, " I have a right to hit him, because 
he hit me first ! " 

Of course, these were suggestive words. And I 
could not but think to myself, walking away from the 
little fellows after having composed their strife. Now 
there is the principle upon which this .world goes on. 
There is not a deeper-rooted tendency in human nature 
than that which is exhibited in that saying of that fine 
little boy. For he was a fine little boy, and so was the 
other. The great principle on which most human 
beings go, in all the relations and all the doings of life, 
is just that which is compendiously expressed in the 
words, " I have a right to hit you, if you hit me first." 
You may trace the manifestations of that great principle 
in all possible walks of life, and among all sorts and 
conditions of men. One man or woman says something 
unkind of another: the other feels quite entitled to 
retaliate by saying something unkind of the first. And 
this tendency apj^ears early. I once heard a little boy 
of four years old say, with some indignation of manner : ^ 
" Miss Smith said I was a troublesome monkey : if she • 
ever says that again, I'll say that she is an ugly old 
maid ! " One man says, in print, something depreciatory 
of another ; finds fault with something the other man 
has said, or written, or done. Then the other man re- 
torts in kind : pays off the first man by publishing 
something depreciatory of him. A great many of the 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 197 

political essays which we read in the newspapers, and 
a great many of the reviews of books we meet, are 
manifestly dictated and inspired by the purpose to re- 
venge some personal offence, to clear off scores by 
hitting the man who has hit you. A sharp, clever 
person reads the book written by an enemy, with the 
determination to pick lioles in it ; not that the book is 
bad, or that he thinks it bad ; but its author has given him 
some offence, and that is to be retaliated. You remem- 
ber, of course, that very clever and very bitter article 
on Mr. Croker's edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, 
wliich is contained in Lord Macaulay's selection of 
essays from the Edinhurgh Review. Was there any 
mortal who supposed that when Macaulay's own History 
of England appeared, Mr. Croker would review it other- 
wise than with a determination to find faults in it ? 
Was there any mortal surprised to find that Mr. Croker, 
having been hit by Macau lay, endeavored to hit Ma- 
caulay again ? And if Macaulay's History had been 
absolutely immaculate, had been a thousand times better 
than it is, do you suppose that would appreciably have 
affected the tone of Mr. Croker's review of it ? I am 
far from saying that Mr. Croker deliberately made up 
his mind to do injustice to Lord Macaulay. It is likely 
enough he thought Macaulay richly deserved all the 
ill he said of him. A great law of mind governs even 
human beings who never came to a formal resolution of 
obeying it ; as a stream never pauses to consider 
whether, at a certain point, it shall run downhill or up. 
When Sir Bulwer Lytton, in his poem of The JVeio 
Timon, alluded to Mr. Tennyson in disparaging terms as 
Miss Alfred, no one was surprised to read, in a few 



198 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

days, that terribly trenchant copy of verses in which 
Mr. Tennyson called Sir Bulwer a Bandbox, and showed 
that the true Timon was quite a different man from the 
Bandbox with his mane in curl-papers. For such is the 
incongruous imagery which the reader will carry away 
from that poem. And if you happen, my reader, to be 
acquainted with three or four men who have opportunity 
to carry on their quarrels in print, or by speeches in 
deliberative assemblies, and if you refuse to take part 
in the quarrels which divide them, and keep resolutely 
on friendly terms with all, you will be struck by the 
fact that the system of mutual hitting and retaliation, 
carried on for a while, quite incapacitates these men for 
doing each other anything like justice. Each will occa- 
sionally caution you against his adversary as a very 
wicked and horrible person ; w^hile you, knowing both, 
are well aware that each is in the main an able and 
good-hearted human being, not without some salient 
faults, of course ; and that the image of each which is 
present to the mind of the other is a frightful carica- 
ture ; is about as like the being represented as the most 
awful photograph ever taken by an ingenious youthful 
amateur is like you, my good-looking friend. I have 
named deliberative assemblies. Everybody knows in 
how striking a fashion you will find the great principle 
of retaliation exhibited in such ; and nowhere, I lament 
to say, more decidedly than in presbyteries, synods, and 
general assemblies, where you might naturally expect 
better things. I have heard a revered friend say, that 
only the imperative sense of duty would ever lead him 
to such places ; and that the efiect of their entire tone 
upon his moral and spiritual nature was the very reverse 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 199 

of healthful. One man, in a speech, says something 
sharp of another : of course, when the first man sits 
down, the second gets up, and says something unkind of 
his brother. And you will sometimes find men, with a 
calculating rancor, and with what Mr. Croker, speaking 
of Earl Russell, called " a spiteful slyness," wait their 
opportunity, that they may deal the return blow at the 
time and place where it will be most keenly felt. Now 
all this, which is bad in anybody, is more evidently bad 
in men who on the previous Sunday were, not improb- 
ably, preaching on the duty of forgiving injuries. All 
clergymen have frequent occasion to repeat certain 
words which run to the effect, "And forgive us our 
trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us." 
Yet you may find a clergyman here and there whose 
reputation is high as a very hard hitter, and as one 
who never suffers any breath of assault to pass without 
keenly retaliating. If you touch such a man, however 
distantly ; if, in the midst of a general panegyric, you 
venture to hint that anything he has done is wrong, he 
will flare up, and you will have a savage reply. You 
know the consequence of touching him, just as you 
know the consequence of giving a kick to a ferocious 
bulldog. Now, is that a fine thing ? Is it anything to 
boast of? I have heard a middle-aged man (not a 
clergyman) state in an ostentatious manner, that he 
never forgot an offence ; that whoever touched him 
would some day (as schoolboys say) catch it. All this 
struck me as tremendously small. In the case of most 
people who talk in that way, it is not true. They are 
not nearly so bad as they would like you to think them. 
They don't cherish resentments in that vindictive way. 



200 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

But if it were true, it would be nothing to be proud of. 
I have heard a man boast that he had never thanked 
anybody for anything all his life. I thought him very 
silly. He expected me to think him very great. I well 
remember how, in a certain senate, after two older mem- 
bers, each a wise and good man when you got him in 
his right mind, had spent some tinje in mutual recrimi- 
nation, a younger member took occasion to point out 
that all this was very far from being right or pleasing. 
To which one of the good men replied, in a ferocious 
voice, and with a very red face, as if that answer settled 
the matter, " But who began it ? " No doubt, the other 
had begun it ; and that good man took refuge in the 
angry schoolboy's principle, " I have a right to hit him, 
because he hit me ! " 

I have been speaking, you see, of those little offences, 
and those little retaliations, which we have occasion 
to observe daily in the comparative trimness and re- 
straint of modem life, and in a state of society where a 
certain Christian tone of feeling, and the strong hand of 
the law, lirnit the offences which can be commonly 
given, and the vengeance which can be commonly taken. 
My good friend A, who has been several times attacked 
in print by B, would probably kick B, if various social 
restraints did not prevent him. But, however open the 
way might be, I really don't believe that A would cut 
B's throat, or burn his house and childi*en and other 
possessions. No ; I don't think he would. Still, there 
is nothing I less like to do than to talk in a dogmatic 
and confident fashion. K Mr. C applies to the univer- 
sity of D for the honorary degree of Doctor of Music, 
and is refused that distinction, mainly (as C believes) 



CONCERNING THE EIGHT TACK. 201 

through the opposition of Professor E, although C may 
retort upon E by a malicious article in a newspaper, 
containing several gross falsehoods, I really believe, and I 
may say I hope, and even surmise, that C, even if he 
had the chance, would not exactly poison E with strych- 
nine. And I may say that I firmly believe, from the 
little I have seen of C's writings (by which alone I 
know him), that nothing would induce C to poison E, if 
C were entirely assured that if he poisoned E, he (C) 
would infallibly be detected and hanged. But we are 
cautious now, and, through various circumstances, our 
claws have been cut short. It was different long ago. 
Of Tjourse we all know how, in the old days, insult or in- 
jury was often wiped out in blood; how it was a step in 
advance even to establish the stern principle of " an eye 
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, hand for hand, foot 
for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe 
for stripe." For that principle made sure that the re- 
taliation should at least not exceed the first offence ; 
while formerly, and even afterwards, where that princi- 
ple was not recognized, very fanciful offences and very 
small injuries sometimes resulted in the quenching of 
many lives, in the carrying fire and sword over great 
tracts of country, and in the perpetuating of bloody 
feuds between whole tribes for age after age. You 
know that there have been countries and times in 
which revenge was organized into a scientific art ; in 
which the terrible vendetta, proclaimed between families, 
was maintained through successive centuries, till one or 
the other was utterly extinguished, and a regularly kept 
record preserved the story how this and the other mem- 
ber of the proscribed race had been ruined, or impris- 
9* 



202 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

oned in a hopeless dungeon, or by false testimony 
brought within the grasp of cruel laws, or directly mur- 
dered outright by some one of the race to which was 
committed the task of vengeance. You know how the 
dying father has, with his latest breath, charged his son 
to devote himself to the destruction of the clan that lived 
beyond the hill or across the river, because of some old 
offence whose history was almost forgot ; you know 
how the Campbell and the Macgregor, the Maxwell 
and the Johnstone, the Chattan and the Quhele — in 
Scotland — were hereditary foes, and how, in many 
other instances, the very infant was born into his ances- 
tors' quarrel. You have heard how a dying man, K)ld 
by the minister of religion that now he must forgive 
every enemy as he himself hoped to be forgiven, has 
said to his surviving child, " Well, / must forgive 
such a one, but my curse be upon you if you do ! " 
I am not going to give you an historical view, or 
anything like an historical view, of a miserable sub- 
ject, but every reader knows well that there is not a 
blacker nor more deplorable page in the history of 
human kind than that which tells us how faithfully, how 
unsparingly, how bloodily, the great principle of return- 
ing evil for evil has been carried out by human beings ; 
the great rule, not of doing to others as you would that 
they should do to you, but of doing to others as they 
have done to you, or perhaps as you tlunk they would 
do to you if they had the chance ; in short, the great 
fundamental principle of universal application, set out in 
the words of my little friend with the inchoate black 
eye, " I have a right to hit him, because he hit me first ! " 
Now, all this kind of thing is what I mean by The 
Wrong Tack. 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 203 

My friendly reader, there is another way of meeting 
injury and unkindness, and a better way. The natural 
tiling, unquestionably, is to return evil for evil. The 
Christian thing, and the better way, is to " overcome evil 
with good." There was a certain Great Teacher, w^ho 
was infinitely more than a Great Teacher, who taught 
all who should be His followers till the end of time, that 
the right thing would always be to meet unkindness with 
kindness ; to forgive men their trespasses as we hope 
our Heavenly Father will forgive ours ; to love our ene- 
mies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that 
hate us, and pray for them which despitefiilly use us and 
persecute us, — if such people be. And an eminent 
philosopher, whom some people would probably appre- 
ciate more highly if he had not been also an inspired 
apostle, spoke not unworthily of his Divine Master when 
he said, " Recompense to no man evil for evil ; dearly 
beloved, avenge not yourselves. If thine enemy hun- 
ger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. Be not 
overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." 

Now, all this kind of thing is what I mean by The 
Right Tack. 

There is no need at all to try formally to define what 
is intended by the Right Tack. Everyone knows all 
about it, and its meaning will become plainer as we go 
on. Of course, the general idea is, that we should try 
to meet unkindness with kindness ; unfairness with fair- 
ness ; a bad word with a good one. The general idea is 
this: Such a neighbor or acquaintance has spoken of 
you unhandsomely, has treated you unjustly. Well, you 
determine that you will not go and make yourself as 
bad as he is, and carry on the quarrel, and increase the 



204 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

bad feeling that already exists, by trying to retort in 
kind, — by saying a bad word about him, or by doing 
him an unfriendly turn. No, you resolve to go upon 
another tack entirely. You will treat the person with 
scrupulous fairness. You try to think kindly of him, 
and to discover some excuse for his conduct towards 
you ; and if an opportunity occurs of doing him a kind 
turn, you do it, frankly and heartily. Let me say, that 
if you try, in a fair spirit and in a kind spirit, to discover 
some excuse for the bad way in which that person has 
treated you, or spoken of you, you will seldom have 
much difficulty in doing so. You will easily think of 
some little provocation you gave him, very likely with- 
out in the least intending it; you will easily see that 
your neighbor was speaking or acting under some mis- 
conception or mistake ; you will easily enough think of 
many little things in his condition — painful, mortify- 
ing, anxious things — which may well be taken as some 
excuse for worse words and doings than ever proceeded 
from him concerning you. Ah, my brother, most people 
in these days, if you did but know all their condition, all 
about their families and their circumstances, have so 
many causes of disquiet and anxiety and irritation to 
fever the weary heart and to shake the shaken nerves, 
that a wise and good man will never make them of- 
fenders for a hasty word, or even for an uncharitable 
suspicion or an unkind deed, very likely hardly said or 
done till it was bitterly repented. My friend Smith, 
who is one of the best of men, was one day startled, at- 
tending a meeting of a certain senatorial body, to hear 
Mr. Jones get up and make a speech in the nature of a 
most vicious attack upon Smith. vSmith listened atten- 



CONCERNING THE EIGHT TACK. 205 

tively to a few paragraphs, and then, turning to the man 
next to him, put the following question : " I say. Brown, 
is not that poor fellow's stomach often very much out of 
order ? " — " He suffers from it horribly," was the true 
reply. " Ah, that 's it, poor fellow," said Smith ; " I see 
what it is that is exacerbating his temper and making 
him talk in that way." And when Jones sat down, 
Smith got up with a kindly face, — I don't mean with a 
provokingly benevolent and forgiving look, — and in a 
simple, earnest way, justified the conduct which had been 
attacked in a manner which conveyed that he was really 
anxious that Jones should think well of him, — all this 
without the slightest complaint of Jones's bitterness, or 
the least reference to it. Smith had only done Jones 
justice in all this. He had done no more than allow 
for something which ought to be allowed for, and Jones 
was fairly beaten. After the meeting he went to Smith- 
and asked his pardon, saying that he really had been 
feeling so ill that he did not know very well what he 
was saying. Smith shook hands with poor Jones* in a 
way that warmed Jones's heart, and thev were better 
fi'iends than ever from that day forward. But in the lot 
of many a man there are worse things than little physi- 
cal uneasinesses, for which a wise man will always allow 
in estimating an offence given. Yes, there are people with 
so much to embitter them, — poor fellows so sadly dis- 
appointed, — clever, sensitive men so terribly misplaced, 
so grievously tried, with their keenly sensitive nature so 
daily rasped, so horribly blistered by coarse, uncongenial 
natures and by unhappy circumstances, — that I am not 
afraid to say that a truly good man, if such a poor fellow 
pitched into him ever so bitterly, or did anything short 



206 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

of hitting him over the head with a more than common- 
ly thick stick, would do no more than beg the poor fel- 
low's pardon. 

But mind, too, my friend, that all tliis kindly way of 
judging your fellow-creatures — all this returning of 
good for evil — must be a real thing, and not a pre- 
tence. It must not be a hypocritical varnishing over of 
a deep, angry, and bitter feeling within us. It must not 
be something done with the purpose of putting our 
neighbor still further and still more conspicuously in the 
wrong. And far less must it consist in mere words with 
no real meaning. Neither must it consist, as it some- 
times in fact does, in saying of an offending neighbor, 
" I bear him no malice ; I forgive him heartily ; I make 
no evil return for his infamous conduct towards me " ; 
when in truth, in the very words of forgiveness, you 
•have said of your offending neighbor just the very worst 
you could say. You may remember certain lines which 
appeared in a London newspaper several years since, 
which purported to be a free translation into rhyme of a 
speech made in the House of Peers by an eminent 
bishop. In that speech the blameless prelate spoke of a 
certain order of men whose tastes were very offensive to 
hira. He said they 

"... Were the vilest race 
That ever in earth or hell had place. 
He would not prejudge them: no, not he; 
For his soul o'erflovved with charity. 
Incarnate fiends, he would not condemn ; 
No, God forbid he should slander them. 
Foul swine, their lordships must confess 
He used them with Christian gentleness. 
He hated all show of persecution, — 
But whv were n't thev sent to execution? " 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 207 

I have no doubt whatever that these lines (which 
form part of a considerable poem) are an extreme ex- 
aggeration of what the bishop did actually say ; yet I 
have just as little doubt that in his speech the bishop 
did exhibit something of that tone. For I have known 
human beings, not a few, who diligently endeavored to 
combine the forgiving of a man with the pitching into 
him just as hard as they conveniently could. Now, that 
will not do. You must make your choice. You cannot 
at the same time have the satisfaction of wreaking your 
vengeance upon one who has injured you, and likewise 
the magnanimous pleasure of thinking that you have 
Christianly forgiven him. Your returning of good for 
evil must be a real thing. It must be done heartily, 
and without reservation in your own mind, or it is noth- 
ing at all. Uriah Ileep, in Mr. Dickens's beautiful 
story, forgave David Copperfield for striking him a 
blow. But Uriah Heep never did anything more vi- 
cious, more thoroughly malignant, than that hypocritical 
act. But it was vicious and malignant, just because it 
was hypocritical. In matters like this, sincerity is the 
touchstone. 

I suppose most readers will agree with me when I 
say that I know no Christian duty which is so griev- 
ously neglected by people claiming to be extremely 
good. There is no mistake whatever as to what is the 
Christian way of meeting an unkindness or an unfriend- 
ly act ; it is very desirable that professing Christians had 
more faith in its efficiency! It would be well if we 
could all heartily believe, and act upon the belief, that 
our Maker knows and advises, the right and happy way 
of meeting a bad turn when it may be done to us, how- 



208 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

ever naturally our own hearts may suggest a very differ- 
ent way ! But I fear that our experience of life has 
convinced most of us, that this duty of returning good 
for evil is one that is very commonly and very thorough- 
ly shelved. A great many people set it aside, as some- 
thing all very good and proper, very fit for the Bible to 
recommend, setting up (as the Bible of course ought to 
do) a perfect ideal, but as something that will not work. 
We have all a little of that feeling latent in us. And 
here and there you may find a human being, perhaps a 
person of an exceedingly loud and ostentatious religious 
profession, who is so touchy, so ready to take offence, 
and then so vindictive and unsparing in following up the 
man that gave it, and in retaliating by word and deed, 
— by abusive speeches and malicious writings and ill-set 
demeanor generally, — that it is extremely plain that, 
though that man might sympathetically shake his head 
if he were told to " overcome evil with good," and ac- 
cept that as a noble precept, still his real motto ought 
rather to be that simple and compendious rule of life, 
" I will hit you if you hit me ! " 

I am going to point out certain reasons which make 
me call the rule of meeting evil with good the Right 
Tack^ and the rule of meeting evil with evil the Wrong 
Tack. For one thing, the Right Tack is the effectual 
way. What the second thing is I don't choose to tell 
you till you arrive at it in the regular course of dili- 
gently reading these pages. Let there be no skipping. 
So, for one thing at a time, the Right Tack is the effec- 
tual thing. 

Of course, the natural impulse is to return a blow, 
and to resent an injury or insult. That, is the first thing 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 209 

that we are ready to do. We do that almost instinct- 
ively, certainly with little previous reflection. And a 
brute does that just as naturally as a man. It is nothing 
to boast of that you stand on the same level as a vicious 
horse, or a savage bulldog, or an angry hornet. But 
then, that does not overcome the evil. No, it perpetu- 
ates and increases it. It provokes a rejoinder in kind ; 
that provokes another, and thus the mischief grows, till 
from a small offence at the beginning, vast and compre- 
hensive sin and misery have arisen. But go on the 
other tack, and you will soon see, from the little child 
at play up to the worn man with his long experience of 
this world, how the soft answer turns away wrath, and 
the kind and good deed beats the evil. There is a beau- 
tiful little tract called The Man that killed his Neighbors , 
which sets forth how a good man, coming to a cantan- 
kerous district, by pure force of persevering and hearty 
kindness, fairly killed various unfriendly neighbors, who 
met him with many unfriendly acts. He killed the 
enemy ; that is, he did not kill the individual man, but 
the enemy was altogether annihilated, and the individual 
man continued to exist as a fast friend. There is some- 
thing left in average human nature even yet, which 
makes it very hard indeed to go on doing ill to a man 
who goes on showing kindness to you. You may get 
that tract for twopence ; go and pay your twopence, and 
(after finishing this essay) read that tract. No doubt 
there is so much that is mean and unworthy in some 
hearts, and people so naturally judge others by them- 
selves, that there may be found those who cannot under- 
stand this returning of good for evil, who will suspect 
there is something wrong lurking under it, and who will 



210 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

not believe that it is all sincere and hearty. And many 
an honest and forgiving heart has felt it as a trial to 
have its good intentions so misconceived. My friend 
Green once wrote an article in a magazine. In a cer- 
tain brilliant weekly periodical there appeared a notice 
of that article, finding fault with it. And a week or 
two after, in another article in the magazine, Green, in 
a good-natured way, replied to the notice in the weekly 
periodical, and while defending himself in so far, admit- 
ted candidly that there was a good deal of truth in the 
strictures of the weekly periodical. Green did all that, 
just as bears and lions growl and fight, because it was 
" his nature too," it cost him no effort ; and assuredly 
there was no hypocritical affectation in what he did. He 
felt no bitterness, and so he showed none. He was 
amused by the clever attack upon him, and showed that 
he was amused. Some time after this, I read an ill- 
natured notice of jjrreen in a newspaper, in which, 
among his other misdoings, there was reckoned up this 
rejoinder to the brilliant weekly periodical. He was 
likened to Uriah Heep, already mentioned ; he was ac- 
cused of -hypocrisy, of arrogant humility, and the like. 
Of course it was manifest to all who knew Green, that 
his assailant knew as much about Green's character as 
he does about the unexplored tracts of Central Africa. 
But a mean-spirited man cannot even understand a gen- 
erous one ; and the assailant could not find it in himself 
to believe that Green was a frank, honest man, writing 
out of the frankness of an unsuspecting heart. So, X 
and Y were once attacked in print by Z. X thereafter 
■cut Z. Y remained on friendly terms with Z, as pre- 
viously. Y pointed out to X that it is foolish to quaj-rel 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 211 

with a man for attacking you, even severely, upon prop- 
erly critical grounds. Y further said that he would 
never quarrel with a man who attacked him even in the 
most unfair way ; that he would treat the attacking party 
with kindness, and try to show him that his unfavorable 
estimate was a mistaken one. " Ah ! " replied X, " you 
are scheming to get Z to puff you ! " To meet evil with 
good, X plainly thought, is a thing that could not be 
done in good faith, and just because it is the right thing 
to do. There must be some underhand, unworthy 
motive ; and the greatest obstacle that you are likely 
to find, in habitually meeting evil with good, will be the 
misconstruction of your conduct by some of the people 
that know you. No doubt Uriah Heep himself and all 
his relatives will be ready to represent that you are a 
humbug and a sneak. Well, it is a great pity ; but 
you cannot help that. Go on still on the Right Tach, 
and by and by it will come to be understood that you 
go upon it in all honesty and truth, and with no sinister 
nor underhand purpose. And when this comes to be 
understood, then the evil in almost every case will be 
overcome, and that effectually. No human being, unless 
some quite exceptionally hardened reprobate, will long 
go on doing ill to another who only and habitually 
returns good for it. 

This is not an essay for Sunday reading : it is meant 
to be quietly read over upon the evening of any day 
from IMonday till Saturday inclusive. But that is no 
reason why I should not say to you, my friend, that you 
and I ought to bring the whole force of our Christian 
life -and principle to bear upon this point. Let us deter- 
mine that, by the help of God's Holy Spirit, without 



212 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

whom we can do nothing as we ought, we shall faith- 
fully go upon the right tack through all the little ruffles 
and offences of daily life. If the sharp retort comes to 
"your lips, remember that it touches the momentous 
question whether you are a Christian at all, or not, that 
you hold that sharp word back, and say a kind one. If 
Mr. A. or Miss B. (a poor old maid, soured a good deal 
by a tolerably bitter life) speak unkindly of you, or do 
you some little injustice, say a good word or do a good 
deed to either of them in return. Pray for God's grace 
to help you habitually to do all that. It will not be 
easy to do all that at the first ; but it will always grow 
easier the longer you try it. It will grow easier, be- 
cause the resolution to go on the right tack will gain 
strength by habit. And it will grow easier too, because 
when those around you know that you honestly take 
Christ's own way of returning an injury, not many will 
have the heart to injure you ; very few will injure you 
twice. I have the firmest belief, that the true system 
of mental philosophy is that which is implied in the 
New Testament ; and that there never was any one who 
knew so well the kind of thing that would suit the 
whole constitution of man, and the whole system of this 
universe, as He who made them both. 

One case is worth many reasonings. Let me relate a 
true story. Not many years since there was in Mesopo- 
tamia a Christian merchant ; of great wealth, and with 
the Right Spirit in him. A neighboring trader, who 
did not know much about the Christian merchant, pub- 
lished a calumnious pamphlet about him. The Chris- 
tian merchant read it : it was very abusive and wicked 
and malicious. In point of style it was something like 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 213 

the little document which contains the articles about 
Good Words which appeared in a newspaper called 
Christian Charity. The Christian merchant, I repeat, 
read the pamphlet. All he said was, that the man who 
wrote it would be sorry for it some day. This was told 
the libellous trader, who replied that he would take 
care that the Christian merchant should never have the 
chance of hurting him. But men in trade cannot 
always decide who their creditors shall be ; and in a 
few months the trader became a bankrupt, and the 
Christian merchant was his cliief creditor. The poor 
man sought to make some arranoement that would let 
him work for his children again. But every one told 
him that this was impossible without the consent of Mr. 
Grant. That was the Clu'istian merchant's honored 
name. "I need not go to him" the poor bankrupt 
said ; " I can expect no favor from him." — " Try him," 
said somebody who knew the good man better. So the 
bankrupt went to Mr. Grant, and told his sad story of 
heavy losses, and of heartless work and sore anxiety 
and privation, and asked Mr. Grant's signature to a 
paper already signed by the others to whom he was in- 
debted. " Give me the paper," said JMi'. Grant, sitting 
down at his desk. It was given, and the good man, as 
he glanced over it, said, " You wrote a pamphlet about 
me once ; " and, without waiting a reply, handed back 
the paper, having written something upon it. The poor 
bankrupt expected to find libeller or slanderer, or some- 
tliing like that written. But no : there it was, fair and 
plain, the signature that was needed to give him another 
chance in life. " I said you would be sorry for writing 
that pam.phlet," the good man went on. "I did not 



214 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

mean it as a threat. I meant that some day you would 
know me better, and see that I did not deserve to be 
attacked in that way. And now," said the good man, 
" tell me all about your prospects ; and especially tell 
me how your wife and children are faring." The poor 
trader told him, that to partly meet his debts he had 
given up everything he had in the world ; and that for 
many days they had hardly had bread to eat. " That 
w^ill never do," said the Christian merchant, putting in 
the poor man's hand money enough to support the 
pinched wife and children for many weeks. " This will 
last for a little, and you shall have more when it is 
gone ; and I shall find some way to help you, and by 
God's blessing you will do beautifully yet. Don't lose 
heart : I '11 stand by you ! " I suppose I need not tell 
you that the poor man's full heart fairly overflowed, 
and he went away crying like a child. Yes, the Eight 
Tack is the effectual thing ! To meet evil with good 
fairly beats the evil, and puts it down. The poor debtor 
was set on his feet again: the hungry little childi-en 
were fed. And the trader never published an attack 
upon that good man again as long as he lived. And 
among the good man's multitude of friends, as he grew 
old among all the things that should accompany old age, 
there was not a truer or heartier one than the old enemy 
thus fairly beaten ! Yes, my reader : let us go upon 
the Eight Tack! 

And now for the other reason I promised to give you 
why I call all this the Eight Tack. It is not merely 
the most effectual thing ; it is the happiest thing. You 
W'ill feel jolly (to use a powei-ful and classical expres- 



CONCERNING THE EIGHT TACK. 215 

sioii) when, in spite of strong temptation to take the 
other way, you resolutely go on the right tack. I sup- 
pose that when the poor trader already named went 
away with his full heart, feeling himself a different man 
from what he had been when he entered the merchant's 
room, and hastening home to tell his wife and children 
that he had found God's kind angel in the shape of a 
white-haired old gentleman in a snuff-colored suit, and 
wearing gaiters, — I suppose there would not be many 
happier men in this world than that truly Christian 
merchant prince. He was very much accustomed, in- 
deed, to the peculiar feeling of a man who has returned 
good for evil ; but this feeling is one which no familiar- 
ity can bring into contempt. But suppose Mr. Grant 
had gone on the other tack ; said, " You libelled me 
once, it is my turn now ; you shall smart for it." I 
don't think any of us would envy him his malignant sat- 
isfaction. And when he went home that night to his 
grand house, and enjoyed all the advantages which came 
of his great wealth, I don't think he would relish them 
more for thinking of the bare home where the poor 
debtor had gone, with his last hopes crushed, and for 
thinking of the little hungry children, — of little Tom 
sobbing himself to sleep without any supper, — of little 
Mary, somewhat older, saying with her thin, white face, 
that she did not want any. At least, if he had found 
happiness in all this, most human beings, with human 
hearts, would class him with devils, rather than with 
men. Give me Lucifer at once, with horns and hoofs, 
rather than tlie rancorous old villain in the snuff-colored 
suit ! 

It causes suffering to ordinary human beings to be 



216 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

involved in strife. It is a dull, rankling pain. It has a 
cross-influence on all you do. And reading your Bible, 
and praying to God, it will often come across you with 
a sad sense of self-accusing. You will not be able to 
entirely acquit yourself of blame. You will feel that 
all this is not very consistent with your Christian pro- 
fession, with your seasons at the communion-table, with 
your prayers for forgiveness as you hope to be forgiven, 
with the remembrance that in a little while you must 
lay down your weary head and die. The man who has 
dealt another a stinging blow in return for some injury, 
the man who has made an exceedingly clever and bitter 
retort, in speech or in writing, may feel a certain com- 
placency, thinking how well he has done it, and what 
vexation he has probably caused to a fellow-sinner and 
fellow-sufferer. But he cannot be happy. He cannot ! 
He cannot know the real glow of heart that you will 
feel, my reader, when God's blessed Spirit has helped 
you with all your heart to do something kind and good 
to an offending brother. Yes, it is the greatest luxury 
in which a human being can indulge himself, the luxury 
of going upon the Right Tack when you are strongly 
tempted to go upon the Wrong ! 

I must speak seriously. I cannot help.it. All this is 
unutterably important, and I cannot leave you, my 
friend, with an}' show of lightness in speaking about it 
All this is of the very essence of our religion ; it goes 
to the great question, whether or not we are Clii'istian 
people at all ; it touches the very ground of our accept- 
ance with God, and the pardon of our manifold sins. 
There are certain words never to be forgotten : " If ye 
forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 217 

also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their tres- 
passes, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." 
Yes, the taint of rankling malice in our hearts, when we 
go to God and ask for pardoning mercy, will turn our 
prayers into an imprecation for wrath. " Forgive us 
our debts, as we forgive our debtors " ; forgive us our 
sins against Thee, just as much as we forgive other men 
their offences against us ; that is, not at all ! Think of 
the unforgiving man or woman who returns evil for evil 
going to God with that prayer ! I cannot say how glad 
and thankful I should be if I thought that all this I have 
been writing would really influence some of those who 
may read this page to resolve, by God's grace, that 
when they are daily tempted to little resentments by 
little offences, — and it is only by these that most Chris- 
tians in actual life are tried, — they will habitually go 
on the Right Tack ! But remember, my friend, that 
nothing you have read is more real and practical, — 
nothing bears more directly upon the interests of the 
life we are daily leading, with all its little worries, trials, 
and cares, — than what I say now, that it is only by the 
help and grace of the Holy Spirit of God that you can 
ever thoroughly and effectually do what I mean by go- 
ing upon the Right Tack. A calm and kindly tempera- 
ment is good ; a disposition to see what may be said in 
defence of such as offend you is good ; and doubtless 
these are helps, but something far more and higher is 
needed. There must be a loftier and more excellent 
inspiration than that of the calm head and the kind 
heart. You will never do anything rightly, never any- 
thing steadflxstly, that goes against the grain of human 
nature, except by the grace of that Blessed One who 

10 



218 CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 

makes us new creatures in Christ. There will be some- 
thing that will not ring sound about all that meeting 
evil with good, which does not proceed from the new 
heart, and the right spirit sanctified of God. 

Now, let there be no misunderstanding of all this, 
and no pushing it into an extreme opposed to common 
sense. All this that has been said has been said con- 
cerning the little offences of daily life. As regards 
these, I believe that what I have called the Right Tack 
is the effectual thing and the happy thing. But I am 
no advocate of the principle of non-resistance. I am no 
member of the Peace Society. I have no wish to see 
Britain disband her armies, and dismantle her navy, and 
lie as a helpless prey at the mercy of any tyrant or 
' invader. No : I should wish our country's claws to be 
sharp and strong ; that is the way to prevent the need 
for their use from arising. I should, with regret, but 
without conscientious scruple, shoot a burglar who in- 
tended to murder me. I heartily approve the blowing 
of a rebel sepoy away from a cannon. And though the 
punishment of death, as inflicted in this country, is a 
miserable necessity, still I believe it is a necessity, and 
a thing morally right, in almost every case in which it 
is inflicted. All that has been said about the returning 
of good for evil is to be read in the light of common 
sense. There are bad people whom you cannot tame or 
put down, except by the severe hand of Justice. And 
in taming them in the only possible way you are doing 
nothing inconsistent with the views set forth in these 
pages. It would take too much time to argue the mat- 
ter fully out; and it is really needless. A wrong- 
headed man, a member of the Peace Society, has pub- 



CONCERNING THE RIGHT TACK. 219 

lished a pamphlet in which he frankly tells us that if 
he and his wife and children were about to be mur- 
dered by a burglar, and if there was no possibility of 
preventing this murdering except by killing the burg- 
lar, then it would be the duty of a Cliristian to die as a 
martyr to his principles, and peaceably allow the burg- 
lar to murder him and his family. Really there is noth- 
ing to be said in reply to such a puzzle-head, except that 
I would just as soon believe that black is white as that 
that is a Christian duty. There are exceptional human 
beings who are really wild beasts, and who must be 
treated precisely as a savage wild beast should be 
treated. And even in the matter of injuries of a less 
decided character than the murdering of yourself, your 
wife, and children, it is as plain as need be that a wise 
and good man may very fitly defend himself against the 
aggression of a ruffian. When Mr. Macpherson threat- 
ened to thrash Dr. Johnson for expressing doubts as to 
the genuineness of Ossian, Dr. Johnson was quite right 
to provide a stick of great size and weight, and to carry 
it about with him for the purpose of self-defence. And 
while desirous to obey the spirit of the Saviour's com- 
mand, there are few things of which I feel more certain, 
than that if a blackguard struck my good friend Dr. 
A on the right cheek, the blameless divine would not 
turn the other also. Nor need we make the least objec- 
tion to the motto of a certain Northern country, which 
conveys that people had better be careful how they do 
that country any wrong, inasmuch as that country won't 
stand it. There is nothing amiss in the " Nemo me im- 
pune lacesset." Don't meddle with us ; we have not 
the least wish to meddle with you. 



CHAPTER XII. 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 



T the present moment I feel very uncomfort- 
able ; not physically, but mentally and mor- 
ally. And I do not know why. What I 
mean is, that a little ago some disagreeable 
thought was presented to my mind which put me quite 
out of sorts. And though- 1 have forgot what the dis- 
agreeable thought was, its effect remains, and I still feel 
out of sorts. I am aware of a certain moral aching 
which I cannot refer to its cause. I suppose, my reader, 
you have often felt the like. You have been conscious 
of a certain gloom, depression, bewilderment, — not re- 
membering what it was that started it. But after a little 
tim6 it suddenly flashes on you, and you remember the 
whole thing. 

I can imagine a man going to be hanged, waking up 
on the fatal morning with a dull aching sense of some- 
thing wrong, he does not know what, till all at once the 
dreadful reality glares upon him. Some of us have had 
the experience, as little boys, when coming back to con- 
sciousness on the morning of the day we had to return 
to school, far away from home. In certain cases, return- 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 221 

ing to school is to a boy not many degrees less unendur- 
able than being hanged is to a man. Of course there is 
no remorse in the case of the little schoolboy, and here 
is a discrepance between the cases suggested. But in- 
deed it is vain to estimate the relative crushing powers 
of two great trials. Each at the time is just as much 
as one can bear. 

But (to go back a little) just as a strong hand, seven 
hundred years since, set a large stone in its place in a 
cathedral wall, and the stone remains there to-day, 
though the hand that placed it is gone and forgot, in like 
manner some painful reflection jars the human mind and 
puts it out of joint, and it remains jarred and out of 
joint after the painful reflection has passed away. A 
cloud passes between us and the sun, and a sudden 
gloom and chill fall upon all things. But, strange to 
say, in the moral world, after the cloud that brought the 
gloom and chill has passed, the gloom and chill remain. 
And thus a human being may feel very uncomfortable, 
and know that he has good reason for being uncomfort- 
able, yet not know what the reason is. If you receive 
ten letters before breakfast, you open them all and read 
them hastily. It is very likely that one of the ten con- 
tains some rather disagreeable communication. You 
forget, in a minute, as you skim the newsj)aper and take 
your breakfast, what that disagreeable communication 
was ; yet still you take your breakfast with a certain 
weight upon your spirits, with a certain vague sense of 
something amiss. 

What is it that is wrong this Saturday evening at 
9.10 p. M. ? Nothing is wrong physically. Too thank- 
ful would this writer be if he could but be assured that 



222 CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 

on all the Saturday evenings of his life he would be as 
happily placed as he is now. To-morrow he is to preach 
at his own church, and during the week all but gone he 
hath prepared two new discourses to be preached on 
that day. Indurated must be that man's conscience, or 
very lightly must that man take his work, who does not 
feel a certain glow of satisfoction on the Saturday eve- 
ning of a week wherein he has prepared two new dis- 
courses. You remark, I don't say two new sermons. 
No sensible mortal can prepare, or would try to prepare, 
two new sermons in one week. But he may prepare one 
sermon and one lecture, which (being added one to the 
other) will be found to amount to two discourses. But 
any one who knows the long and hard work which goes 
to the production of a sermon which people may be ex- 
pected to listen to, will feel, as he sews up his manu- 
script, the peculiar satisfaction which attends the con- 
templation of " something attempted, something done." 

Yes, I remember now. Something I thought of this 
morning has come with me all the day, making me feel 
gloomy even while forgetting what it was. You know 
how a severe sting from a nettle leaves behind it a cer- 
tain starting pain, hours after the first heat of the sting 
is gone. So it was here. And in this, too, is a point 
of difference between the material and moral world. 
In the material world, if a table stands on three leirs, 
and you in succession saw off the three legs, the table 
goes down. But in the moral world (especially in the 
case of old women), if a belief or a feeling founds upon 
three reasons (or legs), though you in succession take 
away those reasons, the table often still stands as before. 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 223 

The physical table cannot do without legs. The moral 
table often stands firmest when it has no legs whatever. 
The beliefs which men often hold most resolutely are 
those for which not merely they can give no reason, but 
for which no reason could be given by anybody. 

I was thinking of the fears which eat the heart out of 
so many lives. And this was my reflection. 

When I was a boy, there was exhibited in London 
what was called a Centrifugal Railway. Let me re- 
quest you earnestly to attend to the subjoined diagram. 

A 

B 




The line A D C B represents the Centrifugal Rail- 
way. You started from the point A in a little carriage. 
It acquired a very great velocity in running down the 
descent from A to D; a velocity so great that it ran 
right round the circle C, turning the passenger with his 
head downwards, and finally got safely to B. At the 
point B the passenger got out, and if he were a person of 
sense (which, under the circumstances, was by no means 
probable), he resolved never to travel by the Centrifu- 
gal Railway any more. 

Now, you observe that in turning the circle C the 
passenger was in a very critical position. He had good 
reason to be thankful when the circle was fairly turned, 
and he had, with unbroken bones, reached B. And it 
struck me, that all our life here is like the circle C on 
the Centrifugal Railway. I shall be able to think dif- 
ferently in a day or two, more hopefully and cheerfully ; 



22~L CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 

but it was borne in upon me that after all, my friends, 
we are doing no more in this life than getting round the 
circle C ; and that there are so many risks in the way, 
that we may be very glad and thankful when it is done. 
He was a wise man in former days who said (let me 
translate his words into my peculiar idiom), '' I call no 
man happy before he has got round the circle C." And 
desponding times will come to all, in which they will 
think of the innumerable sad possibilities which hang 
over them, and the sorrowful certainties which are daily 
drawing nearer, and the dangers of getting off the line 
altogether and going to destruction. I look ahead, 
many a one will sometimes be disposed to say, and 
there are many, many things which I know may go 
wrong. O, I would be thankful if I and those dear to 
me were safely round the circle C, and had got safely 
to the point B ; even though some people shrink from 
that latter point as long as they possibly can. 

Of course, this is a gloomy kind of view ; but such 
views will sometimes push themselves upon one, and 
will not be put off. I hope it will go away shortly. It 
will go away all the sooner for my having made you 
partaker of it. I have in my mind an abstract eidolon, 
an image of the reader of this page, who is my con- 
fidential friend. To him I have told very many things 
which I have hardly ever told to any one else. And I 
want him to take his share of this vexatious view about 
the circle C, that so it may lie lighter on myself. All 
this life, of push, struggle, privation, trickery, getting 
on, failure ; all this Ufe, in which one man becomes 
chancellor, and another prime minister, and another a 
weary careworn drudge, and another a self-satisfied 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 225 

blockhead, and another a poor needlewoman laboring 
eighteen hours a day for a few pence ; all this life, of 
kings and priests and statesmen, of cripples and beggars, 
of joyful hearts and sorrowful hearts, of scheming and 
working, as if there were no other world, — is no more 
than our getting round the circle C. We are cast on 
that incline that begins from A, at our birth ; and our 
business is to get safely to B. 

Every day that dawns upon many people is a little 
circle C. In the morning they are aware that various 
things may go wrong in it ; and of course they do not 
know what the day may bring forth. We are environed 
by many unknown dangers ; and any day we may say 
the hasty word, or do the foolish thing, which may in- 
volve us in great trouble. Even the most sagacious 
and prudent man may some day be taken off his guard. 
And the accidents which may befall us are quite in- 
numerable. It is a wonder we have got on so far 
in life as we have, so little battered by the chances of 
the way. You know some one who went out from his 
own home on a frosty day, and in three minutes came 
back pale and fainting, having fallen and fractured his 
wrist. The pain was great ; and the seclusion from 
work was absolute for a wliile. What could we do if 
the like happened to us ? Some one else thought 
but one step of a stair remained for him to descend, 
while in fact there were two ; and the consequences 
of that misapprehension remained with him painfully to 
the end of his life. And thus, looking back on last year, 
one feels it was a most protracted and perilous circle C. 
It was made up of days, each of which might have 
brought we know not what with it. We have got 
10* o 



226 CONCERNING. NEEDLESS FEARS. 

safely round that circle, indeed ; but at tlie beginning 
we were not sure that we should. If we could have had 
such an assurance it would have spared us many fears. 
These fears are for the most part forgot when we look 
back, and feel how needless they were. But they were 
very real things at the time they were felt, and they 
were a terrible drawback from the pleasures of anticipa- 
tion and of actual fact. When you look back on a few 
weeks or months of foreign travel, the whole thing has 
a fixed and certain look, — the thing that has been is a 
thing for ever. But what a shifting tract of shadows it 
was when you were looking forward to it, and a tract 
not without several alarming spectres vaguely stalking 
about over it. Now we know that we got safely back, 
but when we started we did not know that we should. 
It was like leavmg the point A, and flying round the 
circle C ; whereas now we have reached the point B, 
and we have forgot our emotions in actually flying round 
the circle. 

Two or three days ago, three friends of the writer sailed 
from Southampton, on their way to Egypt and the Holy 
Land. They are to be away three months. They are 
experienced travellers, and have seen very many cities 
and men, and doubtless they started with no feelings but 
those of pleasurable anticipation. When I heard of 
their going my first feeling was one of envy. How de- 
lightful to cast aside all this perpetual toil that overtasks 
one's strength, and keeps one ever on the stretch, and 
have three months for the mind to regain its elasticity, 
much diminished by its being kept always bent ! And 
then, what strange, unfelt moods of thought and feeling 
one would experience when surrounded by the scenes 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 227 

and associations of those tracts of this world ! You 
would accumulate store of new ideas and remembrances ; 
and in the first sermons and essays you would write 
after returning, you would be (in a moral sen-e) curvet- 
ing about like a young colt in a pasture, and not plod- 
ding like an old steady hack along the highway ! But 
when 1 tried to put myself (in fancy) in the place of my 
friends ; when I thought of the long, unknown way, and 
of the unsettled tribes of men ; when I thought of Mr. 
Buckle at Damascus ; when I thought of possible fevers 
and of most certain bugs ; w^hen I thought how when 
human beings go to the East for three months, they 
may chance never to come back at all, — then to a quiet, 
stay-at-home person, who has seen hardly anything, the 
circle C appeared invested with many grounds of alarm ; 
and I was reconciled to the fact that I was not stepping 
on board the Ellora amid a great roar of escaping steam, 
nor going down to the choky little berth, and surveying 
my belongings there. Thus did I repress the rising 
envy in my breast. But when my friends come back 
again, portentous images with huge beards ; when they 
have made the Nile, and Olivet, and Gethsemane, and 
the Dead Sea, a possession for as long as memory serves 
them ; when they have got fairly and triumphantly 
round the circle C, and happily reached the point of 
safety B, — then, I fear, the envious feeling will recur. 

O, if we could but get quit of our needless fears ! Of 
those fears (that is) which take so much from the enjoy- 
ment of life, and which the result proves to have been 
quite groundless ! 

Some folk, with very robust nervous systems, prob- 



228 CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 

ably know but little of these. But from large experi- 
ence of my fellow-creatures, rich and poor, and from care- 
ful investigation of their features, I begin to conclude 
that such fears are very common things. Most middle- 
aged faces have an anxious look. You can see, even 
when they bear a cheerful expression, that they are 
capable in a moment of taking that painful aspect of 
anxiety and apprehension. I do not mean by fear the 
indulgence of physical cowardice ; happily few of the 
race that inhabits Britain will, on emergency, prove de- 
ficient in physical pluck. But I mean that most middle- 
aged people, who have children, are somewhat cowed by 
the unknown Future ; and that the too ready imagina- 
tion can picture out a hundred things that may go 
wrong. Anxius vixi, wrote the man in the Middle 
Ages ; and anxious we live yet, and probably always 
will live, in this world. 

If you go out in the dark expecting to see a ghost, you 
will very likely take a white sheet hung on a hedge for 
one. And even so, people in their feverish state of appre- 
hension sometimes are dreadfully frightened by things 
which in a calmer mood they would discern had nothing 
alarming about them. Every one is sharp enough to see 
this in the case of other people. You will find a man who 
will say to you, " What a goose Smith is to worry him- 
self about that table-cloth on the holly, and declare it is 
an apparition, and that it has bad news for him " ; and 
in a few minutes you will be aware that the man who 
says all this is furtively looking over his shoulder at 
a white donkey feeding under a thick hedge, and dread- 
ing that it is a polar bear about to devour him. 

It is curious to think how often these needless fears, 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 229 

which cause so much unnecessary anxiety and misery, 
are the result of pure miscalculation, and this miscalcu- 
lation not made in a hurry, but deliberately. I have a 
friend who told me this : — When he was married, he 
had exactly £ 500 a year, and no means of adding to 
that income. So as he could not increase his income, 
his business was to keep down his expenditure below it. 
But neither he nor his wife knew much about household 
management ; and (as he afterwards found) he was a 
good deal victimized by his servants. After doing all 
he could to economize, he found, at the end of the third 
month of his financial year, that he had spent exactly 
£ 125. Four times £ 125, he calculated, made £ 600 a 
year, which was just £ 100 more than he had got ; so the 
debtor's prison appeared to loom in view, or some total 
change in his mode of life, which it seemed almost im- 
possible for him to make, without very painful circum- 
stances ; and, for weeks, the thought almost drove him 
distracted. Day and night it never was absent. At 
length, one day, brooding over hk prospects, he sud- 
denly discovered that four times 125 make just 500, and 
not 600 ; so that all his fears were groundless. He was 
relieved, he told me ; but somehow his heart had been 
so burdened and sunk by those anxious weeks, that 
though the cause of anxiety was removed, it was a long 
time before it seemed to recover its spring. 

Now my friend had all his wits about him. There 
was nothing whatever of that causeless delusion which 
shades off into insanity. But somehow he thought that 
125 X 4: = 600 ; and his conclusion was that ruin 
stared him in the face. 

I have heard of a more touching case. A certain 



230 CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 

man brought to a friend a sum of money, rather less 
than a hundred pounds, and asked the friend to keep it 
for him. He said it was all he had in the world, and 
that he did not know what he was to do when it was 
gone. He had been a quite rich man ; but one of those 
swindling institutions whose directors ought to be hung, 
and are not, had involved him in great money responsi- 
bilities by its downfall. In a few days after leaving the 
money with his friend, the poor man committed suicide. 
Then his affairs were examined by competent persons ; 
and it was found that after meeting all possible lia- 
bilities, he had been worth several hundreds a year. 
But the poor fellow had miscalculated ; and here was 
the tragic consequence. 

No doubt, he had been so terribly apprehensive, that 
he had been afraid to make a thorough examination as 
to how his affairs stood. Human beings often undergo 
much needless fear, because they are afraid to search 
out all the facts. For fear of fiudmg the fact worse 
than they fear, they often fear what is much worse than 
the fact. They go on through life thinking they have 
seen a ghost, and miserable in the thought ; whereas, if 
they had but screwed their courage to the point of ex- 
amining, they would have found it was no more than a 
table-cloth drying upon a Ime between two poles. O, 
that we could all, forever, get rid of this moral coward- 
ice ! If you think there is something the matter with 
your heart, go to the doctor and let him examine. 
Probably there is nothing earthly wrong. And even if 
there be, it is better to know the worst than live on 
week after week in a vague, wretched fear. Let us do 
the like with our affairs. Let us do the like with our 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 231 

religious difficulties, with our theological perplexities. 
The very worst thing you can do is to lock the closet 
door when you think probably there is a skeleton within. 
Fling it wide open ; search with a paraffin lamp into 
every corner. A hundred to one, there is no skeleton 
there at all. But from youth to age, we must be bat- 
tling with the dastardly tendency to walk away from the 
white donkey in the shadow, which we ought to walk 
up to. I have seen a little child, who had cut her finger, 
entreat that it might just be tied up, without ever being 
looked at ; she was afraid to look at it. But when it 
was looked at, and washed and sorted, she saw how little 
a thing it was for all the blood that came from it ; and 
about nine-tenths of her fear fled away. 

You have heard of Mr. Elwes, the wealthy miser, 
frightening a guest by walking into his bedroom during 
the night, and saying, " Sir, I have just been robbed of 
seven guineas and a half, which was all I had in the 
world ! " Here, of course, we enter the domain of 
proper insanity. For the fears which a man of vast 
fortune has lest he may die in the workhouse belong 
essentially to the same class with those of the man who 
thinks he is glass, and that if he falls he will break ; or 
who thinks he is butter, and if he goes near the fire he 
will melt. And though all needless fears are morbid 
things, which the healthy mind would shake off, yet 
there is a vast distance between the morbid apprehen- 
sions and the morbid depressions of the practically sane 
man, and the phenomena of the mind which is truly 
insane. 

The truth seems to be, that some people must have a 



232 CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 

certain amount of misery ; and it will attach itself to 
any peg. If not to this, then to another ; but the 
misery is due. And I defy you by any means to lift 
such people above the slough of their apprehensions. 
As you remove each cause of alarm, they will fix upon 
another. First, they fear that their means will not carry 
them from year's end to year's end. That fear proves 
groundless. Next they fear that though their present 
income is ample, somehow it will fall off. That fear 
proves groundless. Next, they are in dread as to the 
provision for their children ; and here, doubtless, most 
men can find a cause of anxiety that will last them 
through all their life. But it is their nature to be 
always imagining something horrible. They live in 
dread that they may quarrel with some friend, or that 
some general crash will come some day, they don't know 
how. And if all other causes of apprehension were 
absolutely removed, they would make themselves 
wretched to a suitable degree by fearing lest an earth- 
quake should swallow up Great Britain, or that Dr. 
Cumming's calculations as to the end of the world may 
prove true. In short, if a human being be of a nervous, 
anxious temperament, it is as certain that such a human 
being will find some peg. to hang his fears upon, as it is 
that a man, who is the possessor of a hat, will find 
something, wherever he goes, to hang it or lay it upon. 
All this seems to be especially true in the case of 
people who have been heavily tried in youth. Human 
beuags may be subjected to a treatment in their early 
years that seems to take the hopeful spring out of them. 
Unless where there is very unusual stamina of mind and 
body, they never quite get over it. You may damage a 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 233 

man so that he will never quite get over it, — you may 
give the youthful mind a wrench whose evil elFect will 
cling to it through all life. There are things in the 
moral world which are like an injury to the spine, — 
never recovered from ; but that grows and strengthens 
with the man's growth and strength ; and no good for- 
tune, no happiness coming afterwards, can ever make 
amends. The evil has been done, and it cannot be 
undone. 

You have beheld a horse, no more than six j^ears of 
age, but which is dull and spiritless, and its forelegs 
somewhat bent and shaky. Why are these things so ? 
It has easy work now, good feeding, kind usage. Yes, 
but it was driven when too young. It was set to hard 
work then, and the creature never has got over it and 
never will. It is too late for any kindness now to make 
up for the mischief done at three years old. 

I am firmly persuaded it is so with many human be- 
ings. They had an unhappy home as little boys, the 
love of the beautiful in nature and art was starved out 
in them. They were committed to the care of a self- 
conceited person, utterly devoid of common sense. All 
mirth was forbidden as something sinful. Life was made 
hard and savorless. They grew up under a bitter sense 
of injustice and oppression, and with the conviction that 
they were hopelessly misunderstood. Or, later, the 
weight of care came down uppn them very heavily. 
There are many people who, for most of the years be- 
tween twenty and thirty, never know what a light heart 
is. And by such things as these the spring of the spirit 
is broken. A dogged steadfastness of purpose may re- 
main, but the elasticity is gone. The writer has no 



234 CONCEENING NEEDLESS FEARS. 

knowledge of Mr. Thackeray's character and career ex- 
cept from the accounts of these which have been pub- 
lished since his death by some who knew him well. But 
it is strongly impressed on one in reading these, that, 
amid all the success and fame and love of his latter years, 
a certain tone of melancholy remained, testifying that 
former days of unappreciated toil, of care, and anxiety, 
had left a trace that never could go. It is only of 
a limited and exceptional order of troubles that the 
memorable words can be spoken with any shade of 
truth : Forsan et hcec olim meminisse juvahiL I do not 
believe that the memory of pure misery can ever be 
other than a miserable thing. 

If this were a sermon, I should now go on to set 
forth, at full length, what I esteem to be the best and 
worthiest means of getting free from those needless 
fears of which we have been thinking. But in this 
essay, I pass these briefly by for the present ; and pro- 
ceed to suggest a lesser cure for needless anxiety, which 
is not without its wholesome effect on some minds. 

I believe that when you are worrying yourself by 
imagining all kinds of evils as likely to befall you, it 
will do you a great deal of good to be allowed to see 
something of other people who are always expecting 
something awful to happen, and with a morbid inge- 
nuity devising ways of making themselves miserable. 
You will discern how ridiculous such people look ; how 
irritating they are ; how, so for from exciting sympath}^, 
they excite indignation. The Spartans were right to 
make their slaves drunk, and thus to cure their chil- 
dren of the least tendency to the vice of drunkenness, 
by letting them see how ugly it looks in another. I 



CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 235 

request Mr. Suarling to take notice, that when I say the 
Spartans were right in doing this, I don't mean to say- 
that they did an act which is in a moral sense to be 
commended or justified. 4-11 I mean is, that they took 
a very effectual means to compass the end they had in 
view. You never feel the badness of your own faults 
so keenly as when you see them carried a little further 
in somebody else. And so a human being, naturally 
very nervous and* evil-foreboding, is corrected, when he 
sees how absurd it looks in another. My friend Jones 
told me, that, after several months of extremely hard 
head-work, which had lowered his nervous system, he 
found himself getting into a way of vaguely dreading 
what might come next, and of receiving his letters in 
the morning with many anticipations of evil. But hap- 
pily a friend came to visit him, who carried all this 
about a hundred degrees further, who had come through 
all his life expecting at least an earthquake daily, if not 
the end of the world. And Jones was set right. In 
the words of Wordsworth, '• He looked upon him, and 
was calmed and cheered." Jones saw how like a fool 
his friend seemed ; and there came a healthy reaction ; 
and he opened his letter-box bravely every morning, 
and was all right again. Yes, let us see the Helot 
drunk, and it will teach us to keep sober. My friend 
Gray told me that for some little space he felt a grow- 
ing tendency to scrubbiness in money matters. But 
having witnessed pinching and paring (without the least 
need for them) carried to a transcendent degree by 
some one else, the very name of economy was made to 
stink in his nostrils ; an<J he felt a mad desire to pitch 
half-crowns about the streets wherever he went. In 



236 CONCERNING NEEDLESS FEAES. 

this case the reaction went too for ; bat in a week or 
two Gray came back to the middle course, which is the 
safest and best. 

But, after all, the right and true way of escaping from 
what Dr. Newman has so happily called "care's un- 
thankful gloom," and of casting off needless fears, lies 
in a different direction altogether. It was wise advice 
of Sidney Smith, when he said that those who desire to 
go hopefully and cheerfully through, their work in this 
life should " take short views " ; not plan too far ahead ; 
take the present blessing and be thankful for it. It was 
indeed the best of all possible advice ; for it was but a 
repetition, in another form, of the counsel of the Kind- 
est and Wisest, " Take, therefore, no thought for the 
morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the 
things of itself: Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof." There is no doubt whatever that the true 
origin of all these forebodings of evil is our lack of trust 
in God. We all bear a far greater burden of anxiety 
than we need bear, just because we will try to bear our 
burden for ourselves, instead of casting it on a stronger 
arm. We try to provide for our children and ourselves, 
forgetting the sure promise to all humble Christian peo- 
ple, that " the Lord will provide." And when we seek 
to cast off our load of care by the help of those comfort- 
able words of Holy Scripture which invite us to trust 
everything to God, we try too much to reason ourselves 
into the assurance that we need not be so care-laden as 
we are. We forget that the only way in which it is pos- 
sible for us to believe these words in our heart, and to 
take the comfort of them, is by heartily asking God that 
they may be carried home to us with the irresistible 



CONXERNING NEEDLESS FEARS. 237 

demonstration of the Holy Spirit. How the circle C 
would lose its fears, if we did but feel, by His gracious 
teaching, that it is the way which God designed for us, 
and that He will " keep us in all our ways ! " When- 
ever I see man or woman, early old with anxiety, and 
with a face deeply lined with care, I think of certain 
words wliich deserve infinitely better than to be printed 
in letters of gold, and I wish that such a one, and that 
all I care for, were numbered among the people who 
have a right to take these words for their own : — 

" Be careful for nothing ; but in everything, by prayer 
and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be 
made known unto God. And the peace of God, which 
passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and 
minds through Christ Jesus." 




CHAPTER XIII. 



BEATEN. 




you know this peculiar feeling? I sj^eak 

to men in middle age. 

To be bearing up as manfully as you can ; 

putting a good face on things ; trying to per- 
suade yourself that you have done very fairly in life 
after all ; and all of a sudden to feel that merciful self- 
deception fail you, and just to break down ; to own how 
bitterly beaten and disappointed you are, and what a sad 
and wretched failure you have made of life ? 

There is no one in the world we all try so hard to 
cheat and delude as ourself. How we hoodwink that 
individual, and try to make him look at things through 
rose-colored spectacles ! Like the poor little girl in 
Mr. Dickens's touching story, we maJce believe very 
much. But sometimes we are not able to make believe. 
The illusion goes. The bare, unvarnished truth forces 
itself upon us, and we see what miserable little wretches 
we are ; how poor and petty are our ends in life, and 
what a dull weary round it all is. You remember the 
poor old half-pay officer, of whom Charles Lamb tells 
us. He was not to be disillusioned. He asked you to 



BEATEN. 239 

hand him the silver sugar-tongs in so confident a tone, 
tliat though your eyes testified that it was but a tea- 
spoon, and that of Britannia metal, a certain spell was 
cast over your mind. But rely on it, though that half- 
starved veteran kept up in this way before people, he 
would often break down when he was alone. It would 
suddenly rush upon him what a wretched old humbug 
he was. 

Is it sometimes so with all of us ? We are none of 
us half-satisfied with ourselves. We know we are poor 
creatures, though we try to persuade ourselves that we 
are tolerably good. At least, if we have any sense, this 
is so. Yet I greatly envied a man whom I passed in 
the street yesterday ; a stranger, a middle-aged person. 
His nose was elevated in the air ; he had a supercilious 
demeanor, expressive of superiority to his fellow-crea- 
tures, and contempt for them. Perhaps he was a 
prince, and so entitled to look down on ordinary folk. 
Perhaps he was a bagman. The few princes I have 
ever seen had nothing of his uplifted aspect. But what 
a fine thing it would be to be able always to delude 
yourself with the belief that you are a great and impor- 
tant person ; to be always quite satisfied vtdth yoiu'self 
and your position. There are people who, while repeat- 
ing certain words in the litany, feel as if it was a mere 
form, signifying nothing, to call themselves miserable sin- 
ners. There are some who say these words sorrowfully 
from their very heart, feeling that they express God's 
truth. They know what weak, silly, sinful beings they 
are ; they know what a poor thing they have made of 
life, with all their hard work, and all their planning and 
scheming. In fact, they feel beaten, disappointed, 



240 BEATEN. 

down. The. high hopes with which they started are 
blighted ; were blighted long ago. They think, with a 
bitter laugh, of their early dreams of eminence, of suc- 
cess, of happiness ; and sometimes, after holding up for 
a while as well as they could, they feel, they can do it 
no longer. Their heart fails them. They sit down and 
give up altogether. Great men and good men have 
done it. It is a comfort to many a poor fellow to think 
of Elijah, beaten and sick at heart, sitting down under a 
scrubby bush at evening far in the bare desert, and feel- 
ing there was no more left, and that he could bear no 
more. Thank God that the verse is in the Bible. 

" But he himself went a day's journey into the wilder- 
ness, and came and sat down under a juniper-tree ; and 
he requested for himself that he might die, and said, 
It is enough : now, O Lord, take away my hfe, for I 
am not better than my fathers." 

I thought of Elijah in the wilderness the other night. 
I saw the great prophet again. For human nature is 
the same in a great prophet as in a poor little hungry 
boy. 

At nine o'clock on Saturday evening, I heard pitiful, 
subdued sobs and crying outside. I know the kind of 
thing that means some one fairly beaten : not angry, 
not bitter ; smashed. I opened the front door, and found 
a little boy, ten years old, sitting on the steps, crying. 
I asked him what was the matter. I see the thin, white, 
hungry, dirty little face. He would have slunk away, 
if he could : he plainly thought his case beyond all 
mending. But I brought him in, and set him on a chair 
in the lobby, and he told his story. He had a large 
bundle of sticks in a ragged sack, — fu*ewood. At three 



BEATEN. 241 

o'clock that afiernoon, he had come out to sell them. 
His mother was a poor washerwoman, in the most 
wretched part of the town : his father was killed a 
fortnight ago by falling from a scaffold. He had walked 
a long way through the streets : about three miles. He 
had tried all the afternoon to sell his sticks, but had 
sold only a halfpenny worth. He was lame, poor little 
man, from a sore leg, but managed to carry his heavy 
load. But at last, going down some poor area stair in 
the dark, he fell down a whole flight of steps, and hurt 
his sore leg so that he could not walk, and also got a 
great cut on the forehead. He had got just the half- 
penny for his poor mother : he had been going about 
with his burden for six hours, with nothing to eat. But 
he turned his face homewards, carrying his sticks, and 
struggled on about a quarter of a mile, and then he 
broke down. He could go no farther. In the dark 
cold night he sat down and cried. It was not the cry- 
ing of one who hoped to attract attention : it was the 
crying of flat despair. 

The first thing I did (which did not take a moment) 
was to thank God that my door -steps had been his juni- 
per-tree. Then I remembered that the first thing God 
did when Elijah broke down was to give him something 
to eat. Yes, it is a great thing to keep up physical 
nature. And the little man had had no food since three 
o'clock till nine. So there came, brought by kind hands 
(not mine), several great slices of bread and butter 
(jam even was added), and a cup of warm tea. The 
spirit began to come a little into the child ; and he 
thought he could manage to get home, if we would let 
him leave his sticks till Monday. We asked him what 
11 p 



242 BEATEN. 

he would have got for his sticks if he had sold them all : 
ninepence. Under the circumstances, it appeared that 
a profit of a hundred per cent was not exorbitant, so he 
received eighteen pence, which he stowed away some- 
where in his rags, and the sack went away, and re- 
turned with all the sticks emptied out. Finally, an old 
gray coat of rough tweed came, and was put upon the 
little boy, and carefully buttoned, forming a capital great 
coat. And forasmuch as his trowsers were most unusu- 
ally ragged, a pair of such appeared, and being wrapped 
up were placed in the sack along with a good deal of 
bread and butter. How the heart of the child had by 
this time revived ! He thought he could go home 
nicely. And having very briefly asked the Father of 
the fatherless to care for him, I beheld him limp away 
in the dark. All this is supremely little to talk about. 
But it was quite a different thing to see. To look at 
the poor starved little face, and the dirty hand Hke a 
claw ; to think of ten years old ; to think of one's own 
children in their warm beds ; to think what all this would 
have been to one's self as a little child. 0, if I had a 
four-leaved shamrock, what a turn-over there should be 
in this world ! 

When the little man went away, I came back to my 
work. I took up my pen, and tried to write, but I could 
not. I thought I saw many human beings besides 
Elijah in the case of that child. I tried to enter into 
the feeling (it was only too easy) of that poor little 
thing in his utter despair. It was sad enough to cany 
about the heavy bundle hour after hour, and to sell only 
the halfpenny worth. But it was dreadful, after tum- 
bling down the stair, to find he was not able to walk ; 



BEATEN. 243 

and still to be struggling to carry back bis load to his 
bare home, which was two miles distant from this spot. 
And at last to sit down in misery on the step in the 
dark night, stunned. He would have been quite happy 
if he had got ninepence, God help him. When I was a 
boy, I remember how a certain person who embittered 
my life in those days was wont to say, as though it 
summed up all the virtues, that such a person was a 
man who looked at both sides of a shilling before spend- 
ing it. It is such a sight as the little boy on the step 
that makes one do the like, that helps one to understand 
the power there is in a shilling. But many human 
beings, who can give a shilling rather than take it, are 
as really beaten as the little boy. They too have got 
their bags, filled with no matter what. Perhaps poetry, 
perhaps metaphysics, perhaps magazine articles, perhaps 
sermons. They thought they would find a market, and 
sell these at a great profit, but they found none. They 
have fallen down a stair, and broken their leg and 
bruised their head. And now, in a moral sense, they 
have sat down in the dark on a step, and, though not 
crying, are gazing about them blankly. 
Perhaps you are one of them. 




CHAPTER XIV. 



GOSSIP, 




HO invents- the current lies ? I suppose a 
multitude of people give each their little 
contribution, till the piece of malignant 
tattle is formed into shape. 
There are many people, claiming to be very religious 
people, who are very willing to repeat a story to the 
prejudice of some one they know, though they have very 
little reason to think it true, and have strong suspicions 
that it is false. There is a lesser number of respectable 
people, who will positively invent and retail a story to 
the prejudice of some one they know, being well aware 
that it is false. In short, most people who repeat ill- 
natured stories may be arranged in these two classes : — 

1. People who lie. 

2. People who lie, and know they lie. 

The intelligent reader is requested to look upon 
the words which follow, and then he will be informed 
about a malicious, vulgar, and horribly stupid piece of 
gossip : — 

Mr. and Mrs. Green 

ALWAYS 

Dress for Dinner. 



GOSSIP. 245 

My friend Mr. Green lately told me, that quite by 
accident he found that in the little country town where 
he lives, and of which indeed he is the vicar, it had 
come to be generally reported that in every bedroom in 
his house a framed and glazed placard was hung above 
the mantelpiece, bearing the above inscription. Miss 
Tarte and IVlr. Fatuous had eagerly disseminated the 
rumor, though it was impossible to say who had origi- 
nated it. Probably Miss Tarte had one day said to Mr. 
Fatuous that Mr. Green ought to have such a placard 
so exhibited, and that some day Mr. Green probably 
would come to have such a placard so exhibited. A 
few days afterwards Mr. Fatuous said to Miss Tarte 
that he supposed Mr. Green must have his placards up 
by this time. And next day, on the strength of that 
statement, Miss Tarte told a good many people that the 
placards were actually up. And the statement was 
willingly received and eagerly repeated by those persons 
in that town who are always dehghted to have something 
to tell which shows that any one they know has done 
something silly or bad. At last a friend of Mr. Green's 
thought it right he should know what Mr. Fatuous and 
Miss Tarte were saying. And Mr. Green, who is a 
resolute person, took means to cut these individuals 
short. My friend has exactly one spare bedroom in his 
house, and no one who is not an idiot need be told that 
no such inscription was ever displayed, or ever dreamt 
of in his establishment. Next Sunday Mr. Green 
preached a sermon from the text. Thou shalt not hear 
false witness against thy neighbor. And after pointing 
out that it was unnecessary that the commandment 
should forbid false witness to the advantage of one's 



246 GOSSIP. 

neighbor, inasmuch as nobody was likely ever to bear 
that, he went on to point out, with great force of argu- 
ment, that if man or woman habitually told lies to the 
prejudice of their neighbors, their Christian character 
might justly be held as an imperfect one, even though 
they should attend all the week-day services and mis- 
sionary society meetings within several miles. Mr. 
Fatuous and Miss Tarte complained that this was very 
unsound doctrine. And Miss Tarte wrote a letter to 
the Record, in which she stated that the vicar habitu- 
ally preached the doctrines of Bishop Colenso. 

One is most unwilling to believe it, yet I am com- 
pelled by the logic of facts to think that malice towards 
all their fellow-creatures is an essential part of the con- 
stitution of many people. All the particles of matter, 
we know, exert on each other a mutual repulsion. Is it 
so with the atoms that make up human society ? Many 
people dislike a man just because they know nothing 
about him. And when they come to know something 
about him, they are sure to dislike him even more. In 
a simple state of society, if you disliked a man you 
would knock him on the head. If an Irishman, you 
would shoot him from behind a hedge. The modern 
civilized means of wreaking your wrath on the man you 
dislike is different. You repeat tattle to his prejudice. 
You tell lies about him. This is the weapon of warfare 
in Christian countries. Two things there are the wise 
man will not trust, if said by various persons we all 
know : — 

1. Anything to their own advantage. 

2. Anything to their neighbor's prejudice. 

It is a bad sign of human nature, that many men 



GOSSIP. . 247 

should have so much to say to the prejudice of any one 
they know. But it is a much worse sign of human na- 
ture that many men should hear with delight, and speak 
with exaggeration, anything to the prejudice of people 
whom they know nothing about. The man you know 
may have given you offence. The man of whom you 
know nothing cannot possibly have done so ; and if you 
hate him, and wash to do him harm, it can only be be- 
cause you are prepared to hate the average specimen of 
your race. We all know those who, if they met a fellow- 
creature out in the lonely desert, would see in him not a 
friend but an enemy, and would prepare to shoot him or 
hamstring him unobserved. For the people I mean pre- 
fer to deal their blow unseen. There are those who, as 
boys at school, would never have a fair fight with a com- 
panion, but would secretly give him a malicious poke 
when unobserved. And such men, I have remarked, 
carry out the system when they have reached maturity. 
They will not boldly face the being they hate, but they 
secretly disseminate falsehoods to his disadvantage. 

But it is sad to think that the hasty judgments men 
form of one another are almost invariably unfavorable 
ones. It is sad to think that people come to have such 
malignant feeling towards other people who are quite 
unknown to them. A short time ago, at a public meet- 
ing, Mr. Jones was proposed as a suitable person to be 
the town beadle. Jones did not want the beadleship, 
being already in possession of a preferable situation of 
the same character. "When his name was proposed, an 
old individual rose to oppose him. That was aU natural. 
But this individual was not content to oppose Jones's 
claims to the beadleship, he positively gnashed his teeth 



248 . GOSSIP. 

in fury at Jones. He had no command of language, 
and could but imperfectly express his hatred ; but he 
foamed at the mouth, the veins of his head swelled up, 
and he trembled in every limb with eager wrath, as he 
declared that he would never consent to Jones being 
beadle ; that if Jones was appointed beadle he himself 
(his name was Mr. Curre) would forthwith quit the town, 
and never aoain enter it. Curre had never exchano;ed 
a word with Jones in all his life ; yet he hated Jones, and 
the mention of Jones's name thus infuriated him, even 
as a scarlet rag a bull. Poor Curre was not a bad- 
hearted fellow after all, and at a subsequent j)eriod 
Jones made his acquaintance. Now, one great principle 
Jones holds by is this, that if any man hate you, it must 
be in some measure your own fault ; you must in some 
way have given offence to the man. So Jones, who is a 
very genial and straightforward person, asked Curre to 
tell him honestly why he had so keenly opposed his ap- 
pointment to the beadleship, adding that he feared he 
had given Curre offence in some way or other, though 
he had never intended it ; and Curre, after some hesi- 
tation and with a good deal of shame, replied, " Well, 
the fact is, I could not bear to see you riding such a fine 
horse, and Mr. Sneakyman told me you paid a hmidred 
and twenty pounds for it." — " My friend Curre," was the 
reply, " I gave just forty for that horse, and how could 
you believe anything said by Sneakyman ? " Curre as- 
sured Jones that the reason why he had disliked him was 
just that he knew so little of him, and that when he 
came to know him his dislike immediately passed into a 
real warm and penitent regard. And when Curre died 
soon after, he left Jones ten thousand pounds. Curre 



GOSSIP. 249 

had no relations, so it was all right ; and Jones had nine- 
teen children, so it was all right for him too. 

Reader, take a large sheet of paper, — foolscap paper. 

Take a pen. Sit down at a table where there is ink. 

Write out a list of all the persons you dislike, adding 
a brief statement of the reason or reasons why you dis- 
like each of them. 

Having written accordingly, ask yourself this ques- 
tion : Am I doing well to be angry with these persons ? 
Have they given me offence to justify this dislike ? 

And now listen to this prophecy. You will be obliged 
to confess that they have not. You will feel ashamed 
of your dislike for them. You will resolve to cease dis- 
liking them. 

Believe one who has tried. Here on this table is a 
large foolscap page. Three names did I write down of 
people I disliked ; then I wrote down the cause why I 
disliked the first, and it looked, being written down, so 
despicably small, that I felt heartily ashamed. And 
now, you large page, go into the fire ; and with you these 
dislikes shall perish. At this moment I don't dislike any 
human being, and if anybody dislikes me I hope he will 
cease doing so. If ever I gave him offence, I am sorry 
for it. 

Yet I cannot quite agree with Jones in thinking that, 
in every case where dislike is felt, it is at least in part 
the fault of the disliked person. In many cases it is : 
not in all. A retired oilman of large wealth bought a 
tract of land, and went to reside on it. He found that 
his parish clergyman drove a handsome carriage, and 
had a couple of men-servants. The old oilman was in- 
furiated. The clergyman's wife erected a conservatory : 
11* 



250 GOSSIP 

the oilman had an epileptic fit. Now all this was en- 
tirely the oilman's own fault. A retired officer went to 
live in a certain rural district. He dined at six o'clock. 
Several people round, who dined at five, took mortal 
offence. O for the abolition of white slavery ! When 
will human beings be suffered to do as they please ? 

I have remarked, too, that most stiipid people hate all 
clever people. I have witnessed a very w^eak and silly 
man repeat, with a fatuous and feeble malignity, like a 
dog without teeth trying to bite, some story to the 
prejudice of an eminent man in the same profession. 
And even worse : you may find such a man repeat a 
story not at all to the disadvantage of the eminent man, 
under the manifest impression that it is to his disadvan- 
tage. I have rarely heard Mr. Snarling say anything 
with more manifest malignity, than when he said that 
my friend Smith had bought a fire-proof safe in which 
to keep his sermons. Well, was there any harm in 
that ? " Bedwell said he would take nothing under the 
chancellorship," said Mr. Dunup. Perhaps Bedwell 
should not have said so ; but the fact proved to be that 
he got the chancellorship. 

Clergymen of little piety or ability, and with empty 
churches, dislike those clergymen whose churches are 
very full. You may discern this unworthy feeling ex- 
hibited in a hundred pitiful, spiteful little ways. I have 
remarked, too, that the emptier a man's church grows, 
the higher becomes his doctrine. And flagrant practi- 
cal neglect of duty is in some cases compensated by vio- 
lent orthodoxy, the orthodoxy being shown mainly by 
accusing other people of heterodoxy. 

Unworthy people hate those who do a thing better 



GOSSIP. 251 

than themselves. An inefficient rector empties his 
church. He gets a popular curate who fills it. The 
parishioners present the curate with a piece of plate. 
Forthwith the rector dismisses the curate. Or perhaps 
the rector dare not venture on that. He waits till the 
curate gets a parish of his own ; and then he diligently 
excludes him from the pulpit whence his sermons were 
so attractive. His old friends shall never see or hear 
him again, if the rector can prevent it. And further, 
the rector and his wife disseminate wretched little bits 
of scandal as to the extravagant sayings and doings of 
the curate, all exaggerated and mostly invented. 

The heroic way of taking gossip is that in which the 
old Earl Marischals took it, when it was a more serious 
thing than now. Above the 'door of each of their cas- 
tles, there were written on the stone these words : — 

They haif sayd : 
Qhat sayd they? 
Lat them say! 




CHAPTER XV 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON.* 




HIS is in every way a remarkable book. We 
have before us in this volume the most gen- 
erally popular work of the greatest and 
meanest man of his time, with a Commen- 
tary of Annotations by the man who, of all living authors, 
approaches in many of his mtellectual characteristics 
nearest to Bacon himself. We find in the writings of 
Archbishop Whately the same independence of thought 
which distinguishes the writings of Bacon ; the same 
profusion of illustration by happy analogies which is 
characteristic of Bacon's later works ; the same clear- 
ness, point, and precision of style. We do not wonder 
that the accomplished prelate, accustomed (as he tells us 
in his Preface) to write down from time to time the ob- 
servations which suggested themselves to him in reading 
Bacon's Essays, should have found them grow beneath 
his hand into a volume ; and we cannot but regard it as 
a boon conferred upon all educated men, that this vol- 
ume has been given to the world. Nor must we omit 
to remark, in this age of readers for mere entertainment, 

* Bacon's Essays : with Annotations by Richard Whately, D. D., 
Archbishop of Dublin. 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 253 

that although the volume be a large one, written by 
an archbishop, and consisting of comments upon the 
thoughts of a great philosopher, the book is invested 
■with such an attractive interest, that it cannot fail to 
prove a readable and entertaining one, even to minds 
unaccustomed to high-class thought and incapable of 
severe thinking. The somewhat severe terseness of the 
Essays is relieved by the lighter and more popular tone 
of the Annotations. Archbishop Whately's mind is of 
that nature that it takes up each of a vast range of 
subjects with equal ease, and apparently with equal 
gusto ; grappling with a great difficulty or unravelling a 
great perplexity with no more appearance of effort than 
when lightly touching a social folly, such as might have 
invited the notice of the author of The Booh of Snohs, 
or when playfully blowing to the winds an error not 
worth serious refutation. Hardly ever in the range of 
literature have we observed the workings of an intellect 
in which nervous strength is so combined with delicate 
tact. We are reminded of Mr. Nasmyth's steam-ham- 
mer, which can smash a mass of steel in shivers, or by 
successive taps drive a nail through a half-inch plank. 

We are thankful that in noticing this book, we are " 
concerned rather with the annotator than with the es- 
sayist ; for not without much pain can we look back on 
Lord Bacon's history. There is something jarring in 
the mingled feelings of admiration and disgust with 
which we think of Bacon's greatness and meanness ; 
his intellectual grasp, his keen insight, his wit, his imagi- 
nation (sober in its wildest flights), his serene temper, 
his brilliant conversation, his courtly manners, his free- 
dom from arrogance and pretence ; and then, on the 



254 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

other side, his cold heart and mean spirit, his low and 
unworthy ambition, his despicable selfishness, his fla- 
grant dishonesty, his crawling servility, his perfidy as a 
friend, his sneakiness as a patriot, his corruption as a 
judge. As to his intellectual greatness there can be no 
question ; though there can be no error more complete 
than to regard him as the inventor or discoverer of the 
Inductive Philosophy. He did not invent it ; he did 
not skilfully apply it. His philosophy differed from 
that which preceded it less in method than in aim ; and 
it is glory enough to have mainly contributed to turn 
the thoughts and the efforts of thoughtful and energetic 
men away from the profitless philosophy of the schools 
to the practical good of mankind. In the commodis hu- 
manis inservire we have the end and the spirit of the 
Baconian philosophy. 

The Essays constitute Bacon's most popular work, if 
not his greatest. They illustrate in thought and style 
what was said of him by Ben Jonson, that " No man 
ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, 
nor suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he 
uttered." Their subjects are well known. We have in 
them the thoughts of Bacon on a considerable range of 
matters, briefly expressed, most of them not occupying 
more than a page or two. They may have been written, 
many of them, at a short sitting, though they manifestly 
give us the results of mature and protracted thought. 
And here ' and there occur those pregnant, suggestive 
sentences which Archbishop Whately has taken as texts 
for his own observations. The Archbishop reminds us 
in his preface, by way of guarding himself from the im- 
putation of presumption in adding to what Bacon has 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 255 

said on many subjects, that the word " essay," which 
has now come to signify a full and careful treatise on a 
subject, was in Bacon's day more correctly understood 
as meaning a slight sketch to be filled up and followed 
out ; a something to set the reader a-thinking ; and the 
Annotations, which form by a great deal the larger 
part of the book, contain the reflections and remarks 
which have been suggested to the Archbishop in his 
reading of the Essays. 

The Annotations are of all degrees, from a sentence 
or two of inference or illustration to a pretty full dis- 
course on some topic more or less directly suggested by 
Bacon. The writer frequently presses opinions which 
he has elsewhere maintained, and gives many extracts 
from his own published works. We also find several 
quotations from other authors, selected (we need not 
say) with great judgment ; and showing us incidentally 
how wide is the Archbishop's reading, and how com- 
pletely he keeps up with whatever is valuable in even 
the lighter literature of the day. In that portion of 
this volume which is properly Dr. Whately's own, we 
have the acute observations of a writer who knows both 
books and men ; of a keen observer ; a thinker almost 
always sound amid extraordinary independence and 
originality ; a master of a style so beautifully lucid alike 
in thought and expression, that we hardly feel, as we 
follow in the track, how difficult it would be to tread 
that path without the direction of a guide so able and so 
sympathetic. 

The characteristics of Archbishop Whately are very 
marked ; and his negative characteristics not less so 
than his positive. No thoughtful man can become 



256 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

acquainted with his writings, without being struck quite 
as much by what this distinguished prelate is not, as by 
what he is. Indeed, what the Archbishop of Dublin is 
not, is perhaps the thing which at first impresses us 
most deeply. We discover in his works the productions 
of a mind which can apply itself to the most diverse 
subjects, and give forth the soundest and shrewdest sense 
on all, expressed in the most felicitous forms. We can- 
not but remark his vast information ; and his ripe wis- 
dom, moral, social, and political. But, after all, the 
thing that strikes us most is, how thoroughly different 
Archbishop Whately is from most people's idea of an 
archbishop. We associate with so elevated a dignitary 
a certain ponderousness of mind ; we assume that his 
intellect must be a machine which by its weight and 
power is rather unfitted for light work ; and we are 
taken by surprise when we find a prelate so dignified 
combining with the graver strength of understanding a 
liveliness, pith, and point, a versatility, wit, and play- 
fulness, which, without taking an atom from that 
respect which is due to his high position, yet put us at 
our ease in his presence, and fit him for tjae attractive 
discussion of almost every topic which can interest the 
scholar and the gentleman. The general idea of an 
archbishop is of something eminently respectable, per- 
haps rather dull and prosy ; never startling us in any 
way by thought or style ; looking at all the world 
through his own medium, and from his own elevated 
point of view ; and above all, an intensely safe man. 
The very reverse of all this is Archbishop Whately. 
Never, indeed, does he say anything inconsistent with 
his dignified position; but his works show him to us 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 257 

(and we know liim by his works alone) as the independ- 
ent thinker, often thinking very differently from the 
majority of men, — the thorough man of the world, in 
the true sense of that phrase, — perfectly versant in the 
ways of living men, from the tricks of the petty trades- 
man up to the diplomacies of cabinets and the social 
ethics of exclusive circles, — at home in the literature 
of the hour no less than in the weightier letters of phi- 
losophy, theology, and politics, — the master of eloquent 
logic, from the heavy artillery which demolishes a 
stronghold of error or scepticism, to the light touch that 
unravels a paradox or puts a troublesome simpleton in 
his right place, — the master of wit, from the half-play- 
ful breath which shows up a little social folly, to the 
scathing sarcasm which turns the laugh against the scof- 
fer, and which shows the would-be wise as the most 
arrant of fools. 

As for Archbishop Whately's positive characteristics, 
we believe that most of his intelligent readers will agree 
with us when we place foremost among these his acute- 
ness and independence of thought. The latter of these 
qualities he possesses almost in excess. We believe 
that to the Archbishop of Dublin the fact that any opin- 
ion is very generally entertained, so far from being a 
recommendation, is rather a reason for regarding it with 
suspicion. It is amusing how regularly we find it occur- 
ring in the prefaces to his works, that one reason for the 
publication of each is his belief that erroneous views are 
commonly entertained as to the subject of it. And 
when we consider how most men receive their opinions 
upon all subjects ready-made, we cannot appreciate too 
highly one who, in the emphatic sense of the phrase, 

Q 



258 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

thinTcs for himself . It is right to add that there is hardly 
an instance in which so much originality of thought can 
be found in conjunction with so much justice and so- 
briety of thought. In Archbishop Whately's writings 
we have independence without the least trace of wrong- 
headedness. His views, especially in his Lectures on a 
Future State, on Good and Evil Angels, and on the 
Characters of the Apostles, are often startling at the first 
glance, because very different from those to which we 
have grown accustomed ; but he generally succeeds in 
convincing us that his opinion is the sound and natural 
one ; and where he fails to carry our conviction along 
with him, he leaves us persuaded of his good faith, and 
sensible that much may be said on his part. 

Another striking characteristic of Archbishop Whately 
is, his extraordinary power of illustrating moral truths 
and principles by analogies to external nature. Not 
even Abraham Tucker possessed this power in so emi- 
nent a degree ; and the Archbishop's illustrations are 
always free from that grossness and vulgarity which 
often deform those of Tucker, who (as he himself tells 
us) did not scruple to take a figure from the kitchen or 
the stable, if it could make his meaning plainer. "We 
cannot call to mind any English author who employs 
imagery in such a profuse degree, yet without the faintest 
suspicion of that nerveless and aimless accumulation of 
figures and comparisons which constitutes what is vul- 
garly termed floweriness of style. We have no fine 
things put in for mere fine-writing's sake. Dr. Whate- 
ly's illustrations are not only invariably apt and strik- 
ing ; they really illustrate his point, they throw light upon 
it, and make it plainer than it was before. They are 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 259 

hardly ever long drawn out ; consisting very frequently 
in a happy analogy suggested in one clause of a sen- 
tence, — the writer being anxious to make that step in 
his reasoning clear, yet too much bent upon the ultimate 
conclusion he is aiming at to linger upon that step longer 
than is necessary to make it so. 

To these hterary qualifications we add, that Arch- 
bishop Whately's information, though evidently reaching 
over a vast field, is yet minutely accurate in the smallest 
details ; and, without the least tinge of pedantry, the fine 
scholarship of the writer often shines through his work. 
It is almost superfluous to allude to the invariable clear- 
ness, point, and felicity of the Archbishop's English 
style, which often warms into eloquence of the highest 
class, — effective and telling, without one grain of clap- 
trap. 

We should give an imperfect view of the characteris- 
tics of the Archbishop of Dublin, if we did not mention, 
as a marked one, his intense honesty of purpose, his 
evident desire to arrive at exact truth, and his care- 
fulness to state opinions and arguments with perfect 
fe,irness. Nor should his fearless out-spokenness be for- 
gotten. He does not hesitate to call an opponent's argu- 
ment nonsense when he has proved it to be so. " Often 
very silly, and not seldom very mischievous," * is his 
description of the speculations of writers of the Emerson 
school. Our readers are perhaps acquainted with the 
Archbishop's remarks upon some of the German writers 
of the present day : — 

" The attention their views have attracted, considering 
their extreme absurdity, is something quite wonderful. But 

* Preface, p. v. 



260 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

there are many persons who are disposed to place confidence 
m any one, in proportion, not to his sound judgment^ but to 
his ingenuity and learning ; qualifications which are some- 
times found in men (such as those writers) who are utterly 
deficient in common-sense and reasoning powers, and knowl- 
edge of human nature, and who consequently fall into such 
gross absurdities as would be, in any matter unconnected 
with religion, regarded as unworthy of serious attention." * 

It is impossible to read the Annotations without feel- 
ing what an acute observer of men is Archbishop Whately. 
How carefully, in his passage through life, has his quick 
eye gathered up the characteristics of those persons with 
whom he has been brought in contact, — their preten- 
sions, foibles, tricks, and errors ; and how well he turns his 
recollections to account, when an example or illustration 
is needed ! We likewise find many indications that he 
has been keenly alive, not more to the ways of men than 
to the little phenomena of nature. We refer our read- 
ers particularly to a passage on the degrees of cold which 
are experienced in the course of a single night (p. 305) ; 
and we wonder how many persons, even of those who 
generally live in the country, are aware of the following 
fact : — 

" Any one who is accustomed to go out before daylight 
will often, in the winter, find the roads full of liquid mud 
half an hour before dawn, and by sunrise as hard as a rock. 
Then those who have been in bed will often observe that ' it 
was a hard frost last night,' when in truth there had been no 
frost at all till daybreak." — p. 305. 

And the final feature we remark in Archbishop Whate- 
ly's character is one which must afford the highest satis- 

* Lectures on the Characters of Our Lord's Apostles, p. 166. 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 261 

faction to all who have, in their own experience, found 
earnest personal religion existing most markedly. in con- 
junction with great weakness, ignorance, and prejudice ; 
and to all who have ever mingled in the society of able 
and cultivated men, who thought that contemptuously to 
put religion aside was the indication of mental vigor and 
enlightenment. It is most satisfactory to find the writ- 
ings of one of the strongest-minded men of his time all 
pervaded and inspirited by a religious principle and feel- 
ing, earnest, unaffected, really practical and influential, 
— as perfectly free from weakness as from self-assertion 
and self-conceit. 

We believe that from this volume of Annotations we 
could construct a tolerably complete scheme of Arch- 
bishop Whately's views on politics, morals, social ethics, 
and the general conduct of life. "We have some indica- 
tion of his peculiar tastes and bent from observing which 
among Bacon's Essays he passes by without remark. 
He has little to say concerning " Masques and Tri- 
umphs." We should judge that his nature has little 
about it of that " soft side " which leads to take de- 
light in the recurrence of periodical festal occasions, 
with their kindly remembrances : we should judge that 
a solitary Christmas would be much less of a trial to 
him than it would be to us ; although the instances of 
Dickens and Jerrold prove that the warmest feeling 
about such seasons and associations is quite consistent 
with even extreme opinions on the side of progress. 
Then the Archbishop passes the Essays on " Building " 
and "Gardens" without a word; although these sub- 
jects would have set many men off into a rhapsody of 
delighted details and fancies. We judge that Dr. 



262 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

Whately has not a very keen relish for external nature 
for its awn sake ; his chief interest in it appears to be in 
the tracing of analogies between the material and moral 
worlds. The fact that Bacon's ideas both on Building 
and Gardening are now quite out of date would be only 
the stronger reason to many men for launching out upon 
the subject; and how deeply could some sympathize 
with Bacon in his ideal picture of a princely palace, — 
one of those delightful palaces in the air about whose 
site there are permitted no drawbacks or shortcomings 
on the part of Nature, — round which ancestral woods 
grow at a moment's notice, and within whose view noble 
rivers, fed by no springs, can flow up-hill, — and in 
whose architecture expense and time need never be 
thought of. But not many men are likely ever to live 
in palaces ; not many more, perhaps, would care to pic- 
ture out such a life for themselves; and we prefer to 
Bacon's palace, the delightful description in Mr. Lou- 
don's Encyclopcedia of Architecture, of what he calls the 
Beau Ideal English Villa. 

We have long regarded the Archbishop of Dublin as, 
in several respects, almost the foremost man of this day. 
It says little for the age's intelligence, that while Dr. 
Cumming's paltry claptraps sell by scores of thousands 
of copies. Archbishop Whately commands an audience, 
fit indeed, but comparatively few ; for his writings pos- 
sess a very high degree of that most indispensable, 
though not highest, of all qualities, interest. He is 
never heavy nor tiresome. Very dull people may under- 
stand, though they may not appreciate him. But we 
are persuaded that his archbishopric lessens the number 
of his readers. Readers for mere amusement are afraid 
to begin what has been written by so great a man. 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 263 

We need hardly say that it is wholly impossible within 
the limits of a short article to give any just idea, either 
of the variety of topics which the Archbishop has dis- 
cussed, or of the manner in which he has discussed them. 
Bacon himself described his Essays as " handling those 
things wherein both men's lives and persons are most 
conversant " ; and Archbishop Whately's Annotations, 
ranging over the same wide field, can be described, as to 
their scope, in no more definite terms. But the same 
necessary want of unity which makes the book so hard 
to speak of as a whole renders it the easier to consider 
in its separate parts. It consists of precious detached 
pieces, each of which loses nothing by being individually 
regarded. But before glancing at some of the topics 
which the Archbishop has treated, we wish to give our 
readers a few specimens of those admirable illustrations 
of moral truths by physical analogies which form so 
striking a feature of his writings : — 

" There are two kinds of orators, the distinction between 
whom might be thus illustrated. When the moon shines 
brightly we are apt to say, ' How beautiful is this moonlight ! ' 
but in the daytime, ' How beautiful are the trees, the fields, 
the mountains ! ' — and, in short, all the objects that are illu- 
minated; we never speak of the sun that makes them so. 
Just in the same way, the really greatest orator shines hke 
the sun, making you think much of the things he is speaking 
of; the second-best shines like the moon, making you think 
much oi him and his eloquence." — (p. 327, Annotation on 
Essay " Of Discourse.") 

" In most subjects, the utmost knowledge that any man can 
attain to, is but ' a little learning ' in comparison of what he 
remains ignorant of. The view resembles that of an Ameri- 
can forest, in which the more trees a man cuts down, the 



264 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

greater is the expanse of wood he sees around him." — (p. 
446, Annotation on Essay " Of Studies.") 

In an annotation on the Essay "Of Negotiating," 
Archbishop Whately mentions, as a caution to be ob- 
served, that in combating, whether as a speaker or a 
writer, deep-rooted prejudices, and maintaining unpopu- 
lar truths, the point to be aimed at should be, to adduce 
what is sufficient, and not much more than is sufficient, 
to prove your conclusion. You affront men's self-esteem, 
and awaken their distrust, by proving the extreme ab- 
surdity of thinking differently from yourself ; and — 

" in this way the very clearness and force of the demonstration 
will, with some minds, have an opposite tendency to the one 
desired. Laborers who are employed in driving wedges into 
a block of wood are careful to use blows of no greater force 
than is just sufficient. If they strike too hard, the elasticity 
of the wood will throw out the wedge" — (p. 432.) 

On the Essay "Of Praise," Archbishop Whately 
remarks, with admirable truth, that it is needless to 
insist, as many do, upon the propriety of not being 
wholly indifferent to the opinions formed of us ; as that 
tendency of our nature stands more in need of keeping 
under than of encouraging or vindicating : — 

" It must be treated like the grass on a lawn which you wish 
to keep in good order : you neither attempt nor wish to de- 
stroy the grass ; but you mow it down from time to time, as 
close as you possibly can, well trusting that there will be 
quite enough left, and that it will be sure to grow again." — 
(p. 491.) 

On the Essay " Of Youth and Age," we have many 
excellent remarks upon the fact to which the experience 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 265 

of most men bears testimony, that great jDrecocity of un- 
derstanding is rarely followed by superior intellect in 
after-life ; and more especially that there is nothing less 
promising than, in early youth, "a certain full-formed, 
settled, and, as it may be called, adult character : " — 

" A lad who has, to a degree that excites wonder and ad- 
miration, the character and demeanor of an intelligent man 
of mature years, will probably be thai, and nothing more, all 
his life, and will cease accordingly to be anything remarka- 
ble, because it was the precocity alone that ever made him 
so. It is remarked by greyhound-fanciers that a well-formed, 
compact-shaped puppy never makes a fleet dog. They see 
more promise in the loose-jointed, awkward, clumsy ones. 
And even so, there is a kind of crudity and unsettledness in 
the minds of those young persons who turn out ultimately 
the most eminent." — (p. 405.) 

How admirably true! We heartily wish that many 
injudicious parents would lay this to heart. Who is 
there who does not remember, how, at school and col- 
lege, some cautious, slow-speaking, never-committuig- 
himself lad, whose seeming precocity of judgment was 
mainly the result of stolidity of understanding and slow- 
ness of circulation, was evermore thrust as a grand 
exemplar before the view of those whose quicker intel- 
lect and warmer heart often got them into scrapes from 
which he kept clear, but promised what he could never 
attain, till the very name of prudence, discretion, reserve, 
became hateful and disgusting! And how regularly 
that pattern boy or lad has proved in after-life the dul- 
lard and booby which his young companions, in their 
more natural frank-heartedness, instinctively knew and 
felt he was even then ! 

12 



2QQ ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

On the Essay " Of Friendship " the Archbishop ob- 
serves : — 

" It may be worth noticing as a curious circumstance, when 
persons past forty before they were at all acquainted form 
together a very close intimacy of friendship. For grafts of 
old wood to take, there must be a wonderful congeniality be- 
tween the trees." — (p. 27G.) 

On Bacon's remark, that "a man that is young in 
years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time," the 
Archbishop says, — 

" And this may be, not only from his having had better 
opportunities, but also from his understanding better how to 
learn by experience. Several different men, who have all 
had equal, or even the very same experience, — that is, have 
been witnesses or agents in the same transactions, — will 
often be found to resemble so many different men looking at 
the same book. One, perhaps, though he distinctly sees 
black marks on white paper, has never learned his letters ; 
another can read, but is a stranger to the language in which 
the book is written ; another has an acquaintance with the 
language, but understands it imperfectly ; another is famil- 
iar with the language, but is a stranger to the subject of the 
book, and wants power or previous instruction to enable him 
fully to take in the author's drift ; while another again per- 
fectly comprehends the whole." — (p. 400.) 

In an annotation on the Essay " Of Dispatch," we find 
some thoughts on the advantage of knowing when to act 
with promptitude and when with deliberation, and of 
being able suitably to meet either case. Then the 
Archbishop goes on as follows : — 

" If you cannot find a counseller who combines these two 
kinds of qualification (which is a thing not to be calculated 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 267 

on), you should seek for some of each sort, — one to devise and 
mature measures that will admit of delay ; and another to 
make prompt guesses, and suggest sudden expedients. A 
bow, such as is approved of by our modern toxophilites, must 
be hacked —^ that is, made of two slips of wood glued together : 
one a very elastic^ but somewhat hrittle wood ; the other much 
less elastic, but very tough. The one gives the requisite 
spring, the other keeps it from breaking. If you have two 
such coun^ellers as are here spoken of, you are provided with 
a hacked bow." — (p. 250.) 

Describing the two opposite sorts of men who equally- 
precipitate a country into anarchy, the one sort by obsti- 
nately resisting all innovations, and the other by reck- 
lessly hurrying into violent changes without reason, the 
Archbishop says : — 

" The two kinds of absurdity here adverted to may be 
compared respectively to the acts of two kinds of irrational 
animals, a moth and a horse. The moth rushes into a flame, 
and is burned ; and the horse obstinately stands still in a sta- 
ble that is on fire, and is burned likewise. One may often 
meet with persons of opposite dispositions, though equally 
unwise, who are accordingly prone respectively to these op- 
posite errors ; the one partaking more of the character of the 
moth, and the other of the horse." — (p. 244.) 

Mr. Macaulay tells us, and experience confirms his 
statement, that it is not easy to make a simile go on all- 
fours, and incomparably more difficult to attain strict 
accuracy when an analogy is drawn out to any length. 
But Archbishop Whately overcomes this difiiculty. 
There is no hitch whatever in the following comparison, 
though it runs to very minute and exact details ; — 

" The elFect produced by any writing or speech of an argu- 



268 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

mentative character, on any subject on which diversity of 
opinion prevails, may be compared — supposing the argu- 
ment to be of any weight — to the effects of a fire-engine on 
a conflagration. That portion of the water which falls on 
solid stone walls is poured out where it is- not needed. 
That, again, which falls on blazing beams and rafters, is cast 
oflf in volumes of hissing steam, and will seldom avail to 
quench the fire. But that which is poured on woodwork 
that is just beginning to kindle, may stop the burning; and 
that which wets the rafters not yet ignited, but in danger, 
may save them from catching fire. Even so, those who 
already concur with the writer as to some point, will feel 
gratified with, and perhaps bestow high commendation on, an 
able defence of the opinions they already hold ; and those, 
again, who have fully made up their minds on the opposite 
side, are more likely to be displeased than to be convinced. 
But both of these parties are left nearly in the same mind as 
before. Those, however, who are in a hesitating and doubt- 
ful state, may very likely be decided by forcible arguments ; 
and those who have not hitherto considered the subject may 
be induced to adopt opinions which they find supported by 
the strongest reasons. But the readiest and warmest appro- 
bation a writer meets with will usually be from those whom 
he has not convinced, because they were convinced already. 
And the effect the most important and the most difiicult to 
be produced he will usually, when he does produce it, hear 
the least of" — (p. 432.) 

We do not know where to find a comparison more 
correct or more beautiful than that with which the 
highly-gifted prelate concludes his remarks on those 
writers who inculcate morality, with an exclusion of all 
reference fo religious principle. He gives us to under- 
stand that the resolute manner in which Miss Edge- 
worth, in her works, ignored Christianity, was the result 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 2G9 

of an entire disbelief in its doctrines. But even this soA 
fact leaves her open to the charge of having falsified 
poetical truth ; inasmuch as it cannot be denied that 
Christianity, true or false, does exist, and does exercise 
a material influence on the feelings and conduct of some 
of the believers in it. And to represent all sorts of peo- 
ple as involved in all sorts of circumstances, while yet 
none ever makes the least reference to a religious mo- 
tive, is artistically unnatural. The graver objection 
still remains, that the moral excellences described in 
non-religious fictions as existing, cannot exist, cannot be 
realized, except by resorting to principles which, in 
those fictions, are unnoticed. And the young reader 
should therefore be reminded — 

*' that all these ' things that are lovely and of good report,' 
which have been placed before him, are the genuine fruits of 
the Holy Land, though the spies who have brought them 
bring also an evil report of that land, and would persuade us 
to remain wandering in the wilderness." — (p. 468.) 

In pointing out the unfairness to a new colony of 
making it the receptacle of the blackguards and scape- 
graces of the old country, by the system of penal trans- 
portation, the Archbishop happily illustrates the way in 
which people of not very logical minds are brought to 
associate things wliich are not merely unconnected, but 
inconsistent : — 

" In other subjects, as well as in this, I have observed that 
two distinct objects may, by being dexterously presented 
again and again in quick succession, to the mind of a cursory 
reader, be so associated together in his thoughts as to be con- 
ceived capable, when in fact they are not, of being actually 
combined in practice. The fallacious belief thus induced 



270 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

bears a striking resemblance to tbe optical illusion effected 
by t.bat ingenious and pbilosopbical toy called the ' thauma- 
trope ' ; in which two objects painted on opposite sides of a 
card — for instance, a man and a horse, a bird and a cage 
— are, by a quick rotatory motion, made so to impress the 
eye in combination, as to form one picture, of the man on 
the horse's back, — the bird in the cage, &c. As soon as the 
card is allowed to remain at rest, the figures, of course, ap- 
pear as they really are, separate and on opposite sides. A 
mental illusion closely analogous to this is produced, when, 
by a rapid and repeated transition from one subject to an- 
other alternately, the mind is deluded into an idea of the 
actual combination of things that are really incompatible. 
The chief part of the defence which various writers have 
advanced in favor of the system of penal colonies consists, 
in truth, of a sort of intellectual thaumatrope. The pros- 
perity of the colony, and the repression of crime, are, by a 
sort of rapid whirl, presented to the mind as combined in 
one picture. A very moderate degree of calm and fixed 
attention soon shows that the two objects are painted on op' 
posite sides of the card." — (p. 334.) 

On the risk run by superstitious persons of falling 
into grave error : — 

" Minds strongly predisposed to superstition may be com- 
pared to heavy bodies just balanced on the verge of a preci- 
pice. The slightest touch will send them over; and then 
the greatest exertion that can be made may be insufficient 
to arrest their fall." — (p. 155.) 

Illustration is sometimes the most cogent of argu- 
ment. A volume of reasoning against ultra-conservar 
tism would not equal, for general impression, the follow- 
ing plain statement of the case : — 

"Is there not, then, some reason for the ridicule which 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 271 

Bacon speaks of, as attaching to those ' who too much rever- 
ence old times ? ' To say that no changes shall take place 
is to talk idly. We might as well pretend to control the 
motions of the earth. To resolve that none shall take place 
except what are undesigned and accidental, is to resolve that 
though a clock may gain or lose indefinitely, at least we will 
take care that it shall never be regulated. ' If time ' (to use 
Bacon's warning words) ' alters things to the worse, and wis- 
dom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what 
shall be the end?'" — (pp. 236, 237.) 

We shall throw together, without remark, some fur- 
ther examples of Archbishop Whately's power of illus- 
trating the moral by the physical. So marked a feature 
in his intellectual portraiture deserves, we think, ex- 
tended notice. But it is only by studying the Annota- 
tions for themselves, that our readers can form any just 
idea of the affluence and exuberance of happy imagery 
with which they sparkle all over: — 

" To these small wares, enumerated by Bacon, might be 
added a very hackneyed trick, which yet is wonderfully suc- 
cessful, — to affect a delicacy about mentioning particulars, 
and hint at what you could bring forward, only you do not 
wish to give offence. ' We could give many cases to prove 
that such and such a medical system is all a delusion, and a 
piece of quackery ; but we abstain, through tenderness for 
individuals, from bringing names before the public' ' I have 
observed many things — which, however, I will not particu- 
larize — which convince me that IVIr. Such-a-one is unfit for 
his office ; and others have made the same remark ; but I do 
not like to bring them forward,' &c., &c. 

" Thus an unarmed man keeps the unthinking in awe, by 
assuring them that he has a pair of loaded pistols in his 
pocket, though he is loth to produce them." -^ (p. 210.) 



272 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

" A man who plainly perceives that, as Bacon obserres, 
there are some cases which call for promptitude, and others 
which require delay, and who has also sagacity enough to 
perceive which is which, will often be mortified at perceiving 
that he has come too late for some things, and too soon for 
others; that he is like a skilful engineer, who perceives 
how he could, fifty years earlier, have effectually preserved 
an important harbor which is now irrecoverably silted up, 
and how he could, fifty years hence, though not at present, 
reclaim from the sea thousands of acres of fertile land at the 
delta of some river." — (p. 203.) 

" As in contemplating an ebbing tide, we are sometimes in 
doubt, on a short inspection, whether the sea is really reced- 
ing, because, from time to time, a wave will dash farther up 
the shore than those which have preceded it, but, if we con- 
tinue our observation long enough, we see plainly that the 
boundary of the land is on the whole advancing ; so here, by 
extending our view over many countries and through several 
ages, we may distinctly perceive the tendencies which would 
have escaped a more confined research." — (p. 300.) 

" An ancient Greek colony was like what gardeners call a 
layer; a portion of the parent tree, with stem, twigs, and 
leaves imbedded in fresh soil till it had taken root, and then 
severed. A modern colony is like handfuls of twigs and 
leaves pulled off at random, and thrown into the earth to 
take their chance." — (p. 341.) 

" ' There he that can pack the cards, and yet caiinot play 
iveli: 

" Those whom Bacon here so well describes are men of a 
clear and quick sight, but short-sighted. They are ingenious 
in particulars, but cannot take a comprehensive view of a 
whole. Such a man may make a good captain, but a bad 
general. He may be clever at surprising a picket, but 
would fail in the management of a great army and the con- 
duct of a campaign. He is like a chess-player who takes 
several pawns, but is checkmated." — (p. 215.) 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 273 

" The truth is, that in all the serious and important affairs 
of life men are attached to what they have been used to ; in 
matters of ornament they covet novelty ; in all systems and 
institutions, — in all the ordinary business of life, — in all 
fundamentals, — they cling to what is the established course; 
in matters of detail, — in what lies, as it were, on the surface, 
— they seek variety. Man may, in reference to this point, 
be compared to a tree whose stem and main branches stand 
year after year, but whose leaves and flowers are fresh every 
season." — (p. 228.) 

" In no point is the record of past times more instructive 
to those capable of learning from other experience than their 
own, than in what relates to the history of reactions. 

" It has been often remarked by geographers that a river 
flowing through a level country of soft alluvial soil never 
keeps a straight course, but winds regularly to and fro, in the 
form of the letter S many times repeated. And a geogra- 
pher, on looking at the course of any stream as marked on a 
map, can at once tell whether it flows along a plain (like the 
river Meander, which has given its name to such windings), 
or through a rocky and hilly country. It is found, indeed, 
that if a straight channel be cut for any stream in a plain 
consisting of tolerably soft soil, it never will long continue 
straight, unless artificially kept so, but becomes crooked, and 
increases its windings more and more every year. The 
cause is, that any little wearing away of the bank in the soft- 
est part of the soil, on one side, occasions a set of the stream 
against this hollow, which increases it, and at the same time 
drives the water aslant against the opposite bank a little 
lower down. This wears away that bank also ; and thus the 
stream is again driven against a part of the first bank, still 
lower ; and so on, till by the wearing away of the banks at 
these points on each side, and the deposit of mud (gradually 
becoming dry land) in the comparatively still water between 
them, the course of the stream becomes sinuous, and its 

windings increase more and more. 

12* R 



274 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

" And even thus, in human affairs, we find alternate 
movements, in nearly opposite directions, taking place from 
time to time, and generally bearing some proportion to each 
other in respect of the violence of each ; even as the highest 
flood-tide is succeeded by the lowest ebb." — (p. 175.) 

Very beautifully, in the following paragraph, does the 
Archbishop illustrate the law that whatever is to last 
long, must grow slowly : — 

" We hear of volcanic islands thrown up in a few days to 
a formidable size, and in a few weeks or months sinking 
down again or washed away; while other islands, which are 
the summits of banks covered with weed and drift-sand, con- 
tinue slowly increasing year after year, century after cen- 
tury. The man that is in a hurry to see the full effect of 
his own tillage should cultivate annuals, not forest-trees. 
The clear-headed lover of truth is content to wait for the 
result of his. If he is wrong in the doctrines he maintains, 
or the measures he proposes, at least it is not for the sake of 
immediate popularity. If he is right, it will be found out in 
time, though perhaps not in his time. The preparers of the 
mummies were (Herodotus says) driven out of the house by 
the family who had engaged their services, with execrations 
and stones ; but their work remains sound after three thou- 
sand years." — (p. 503.) 

Although these extracts have been given mainly to 
exemplify Archbishop Whately's mode of enforcing 
and illustrating his views, they may have served like- 
wise to give our readers some notion of the variety of 
topics treated in this volume, and of the Archbishop's 
opinions upon some of these. We hardly know how to 
attempt a description of the matter of the work as dis- 
tinguished from its manner. There are scores of para- 
graphs among the Annotations which might each supply 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 27 o 

material for extended review ; and we had marked 
many interesting passages with the intention of discuss- 
ing at some length the views contained in them. But, 
even after weeding out of our list the topics which ap- 
peared of minor interest (the process was that of thin- 
ning rather than of weeding), so many remain, that we 
can do no more than glance at two or three. 

In the second edition of the work just published, we 
find no material differences when compared with the 
first. Archbishop Whately's opinions have been too 
well considered to admit of change within a few months' 
space. But the minute reader will find here and there 
many little additions, which afford pleasant proof that 
the author is still thinking upon the subjects treated ; 
and which promise that, rich as this volume already is 
in wisdom and eloquence, it may yet be further enriched 
by the further observation and reflection of- its writer. In 
the former edition the Essay " On Faction " was followed 
by no remarks ; in the present edition it is followed by 
several annotations, — some of them suggested, we may 
believe, by recent occurrences in America. The follow- 
ing passage, of special interest at the present time, 
jDoints out forcibly the advantage of having in a state 
aliquid impercussum, — a central rallying-point detached 
from all party, and to which all parties may profess 
attachment : — 

" Bacon's remark, that a prince ought not to make it his 
policy to ' govern according to respect to factions^' suggests a 
strong ground of preference of hereditary to elective sove- 
reignty. For when a chief — whether called king, emperor, 
president, or by whatever name — is elected (whether for life, 
or for a term of years), he can hardly avoid being the head 



276 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

of a party. He who is elected will be likely to feel aversion 
towards those who have voted against him ; who may be, 
perhaps, nearly half of his subjects. And they again will be 
likely to regard him as an enemy ^ instead of feeling loyalty to 
him as their prince. 

" And those again who have voted for him, will consider 
him as being under an obligation to them, and expect him to 
show to them more favor than to the rest of his subjects ; so 
that he will be rather the head of a party than the king of a 
people. 

" Then, too, when the throne is likely to become vacant, — ■ 
that is, when the king is old, or is attacked with any serious 
illness, — what secret canvassing and disturbance of men's 
minds will take place ! The king himself will most likely 
wish that his son, or some other near relative or friend, should 
succeed him, and he will employ all his patronage with a 
view to such an election ; appointing to public offices not the 
fittest men, but those whom he can reckon on as voters. And 
others will be exerting themselves to form a party against 
him ; so that the country will be hardly ever tranquil, and 
very seldom well-governed. 

" If, indeed, men were very different from what they are, 
there might be superior advantages in an elective royalty; 
but in the actual state of things, the disadvantages will in 
general greatly outweigh the benefits. 

" Accordingly most nations have seen the advantage of 
hereditary royalty, notwithstanding the defects of such a 
constitution." 

"We heartily wish that all parents would remember 
and act upon the Archbishop's views, as expressed in 
the following passage. We believe the caution is ex- 
tensively needed. TVe believe that many injudicious 
parents (with the best intention) trench upon the incom- 
municable prerogative of the All-wise and Almighty, 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 277 

by needlessly causing griefs and disappointments to their 
children, under the idea that all this forms a wholesome 
discipline. They forget that the nature and effect of 
every event partaking of the character of pain is deter- 
mined by the source it comes from. When the heaviest 
sorrow comes by God's appointment, we bow in sub- 
mission ; and this not merely because we cannot help it, 
because it is vain to repine, because God ivill take his 
own way whether we like it or not, but because we 
have perfect confidence in the rightness of whatever 
God may do, and because we feel assured that there 
must be good reason for all He does, although we may 
not be able to discern that reason. As regards man, we 
have no such confidence. And parents may be assured 
that their foolish conduct towards their children in many 
cases is a training, but an extremely bad one ; it trains 
the children to a spirit of fruitless and therefore bitter 
resistance, and of dogged resentment. The philan- 
thropist Howard, by taking the course the Archbishop 
reprobates, drove his son into a lunatic asylum. He 
followed that course rigorously and universally, and so 
the worst degree of mental disease ensued upon it. 
Most parents follow it only in part ; and the lesser evil 
follows, of alienated affection, loss of confidence, jaun- 
diced views, and a soured heart. Yet if any parent, on 
a cold morning, insists on his children remaining in that 
part of the room most distant from the fire, when their 
warming their little blue hands there could do no harm 
to any human being ; or systematically refuses to per- 
mit them to go to " children's parties," not because they 
are asked to too many, but merely because it is good 
for them to be disappointed ; or, generally, seeks to 



278 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

repress the exhibition of gaiety and Hght-heartedness, 
because " we must through much tribuhition enter the 
kingdom of God," — then let that parent be assured, that 
surely as the field sown with tares yielded a harvest of 
tares, so surely will this petty tyranny bring forth its 
natural result, of resentment and aversion. 

" Most carefully should we avoid the error of which some 
parents, not (otherwise) deficient in good sense, commit, of 
imposing gratuitous restrictions and privations, and purposely 
inflicting needless disappointments, for the purpose of inuring 
children to the pains and troubles they will meet with in 
after-Hfe. Yes, be assured they will meet with quite enough, 
in every portion of life, including childhood, without your 
strewing their path with thorns of your own providing. And 
often enough will you have to limit their amusements for the 
sake of needful study, to restrain their appetites for the sake 
of health, to chastise them for faults, and in various ways to 
inflict pain or privations for the sake of avoiding some greater 
evils. Let this always be explained to them whenever it is 
possible to do so ; and endeavor in all cases to make them 
look on the parent as never the voluntary giver of anything 
but good. To any hardships which they are convinced you 
inflict reluctantly, and to those which occur tlu-ough the dis- 
pensation of the All-wise, they will more easily be trained to 
submit with a good grace than to any gratuitous sufierings 
devised for them by fallible men. To raise hopes on purpose 
to produce disappointment, to give provocation merely to 
exercise the temper, and, in short, to inflict pain of any kind 
merely as a training for patience and fortitude, — this is a 
kind of discipUne which man should not presume to attempt. 
If such trials prove a discipline, not so much of cheerful 
fortitude as of resentful aversion and suspicious distrust of 
the parent as a capricious tyrant, you will have only yourself 
to thank for this result." — (pp. 58, 59.) 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 279 

Archbishop Whately is of opinion that the fear of 
punishment in a future life is a motive of more per- 
manent force than that of temporal judgments. "We 
quote his words : — 

" It is true that some men, who are nearly strangers to 
such a habit, may be for a time more alarmed by the de- 
nunciation of immediate temporal judgments for their sins, 
than by any considerations relative to ' the things which are 
not seen and which are eternal.' But the effect thus produced 
is much less likely to be lasting, or while it lasts to be salu- 
tary, because temporal alarm does not tend to make men 
spiritually-minded, and any reformation of manners it may 
have produced will not have been founded on Christian 
principles." — (pp. 61, 62.) 

Upon this we remark that there can be no question 
that, were future punishments realized as substantially 
as temporal evils, they ought to have, and would have, 
a much greater effect in deterring from sinful conduct. 
But the great difficulty with which men have to contend 
is the essential impossibility of realizing spiritual and 
unseen things in their true bulk and importance ; of 
feeling that a thing in the Bible, or in a sermon, is as 
real a thing as something in the daylight, material world. 
In no case is this difficulty more felt than in regard to 
future punishments in another life. We may be far 
mistaken ; but the result of considerable experience of 
the ways and feelings of a rustic population, is some- 
thing of doubt whether in practice the fear of future 
punishment produces any effect in deterring from evil 
courses. A mountain far away may be concealed by a 
shilling held close to the eye ; and future woe seems to 
crass minds so distant and so misty, that a very small 
immediate gratification quite hides it from view. 



280 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

We remember, as illustrative of this, a circumstance 
related by a neighboring clergyman. His parishioners 
were sadly addicted to drinking to excess. Men and 
women were alike given to this degrading vice. He did, 
of course, all he could to repress it, but all in vain. For 
many years, he said, he warned the drunkards in jLhe 
most solemn manner of the doom they might expect in 
another world ; but, so far as he knew, not a pot of ale 
or glass of spirits the less was drunk in the parish in 
consequence of his denunciations. Future woe melted 
into mist in the presence of a replenished jug on a mar- 
ket-day. A happy thought struck the clergyman. In 
the neighboring town there was a clever medical man, 
a vehement teetotaler. Plim he summoned to his aid. 
The doctor came, and delivered a lecture on the physical 
consequences of drunkenness, illustrating his lecture with 
large diagrams which gave shocking representations of 
the stomach, lungs, heart, and other vital organs, as af- 
fected by alchohol. These things came home to the 
drunkards, who had not cared a rush for final perdition. 
The effect produced was tremendous. Almost all the 
men and women of the parish took the total-abstinence 
pledge ; and since that day, drunkenness has nearly 
ceased in that parish. Nor was the improvement eva- 
nescent; it has lasted for two or three years. 
j The Archbishop, in the Annotations upon " Simula- 
tion and Dissimulation," discusses the question whether 
an author is justified in disowning the authorship of his 
anonymous productions. It is, indeed, a considerable 
annoyance when meddling and impertinent persons, in 
spite of every indication that the subject is a disagree- 
able one, persist in trying hj fishing questions to discover 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 281 

whether we know who wrote such an article in Fraser's 
Magazine or the Edinburgh Review; and though no 
man of good sense or taste will do this, no author is safe 
in the existing abundance of men who are devoid of both 
these qualities. "We have known instances in which the 
subject was recurred to time after time by impertinent 
questioners, and in which, by sudden inquiries put in the 
presence of many listeners, and by interrogating the rel- 
atives and intimate friends of the supposed writer, at- 
tempts were made to elicit the fact. 

It is curious to remark the various opinions which 
have been put on record as to the casuistry of such cases. 
There is but one opinion as to the extreme impertinence 
of the questioners ; and so far as they are concerned, the 
curtest refusal to answer their inquiries would be the 
fittest way of meeting them. But, unhappily, a refusal 
to reply will in many cases be regarded as an answer in 
the affirmative ; and if the only alternatives were a cor- 
rect answer and no ansiver, any meddling fool might re- 
veal a literary secret of the highest importance. Dr. 
Johnson took up the ground that an author is justified in 
directly denying that he wrote his anonymous writings. 
Sir 'Walter Scott expressly declared that he was not the 
author of the Waverley Novels. Mr. Samuel Warren, 
when a lad at school, with characteristic presumption, 
wrote to Sir AV alter as such, and Sir Walter's answer, 
published in Mr. Warren's Miscellanies, expressly repu- 
diates the authorship. Mr. Samuel Rogers drew a nice 
distinction. Some forward individual, in his presence, 
taxed Scott with the authorship of Waverley ; Sir Wal- 
ter replied, " Upon m}^ honor, I am not " ; and Rogers 
thought that Scott might fairly have replied in the nega- 



282 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

tive, but that he ought not to have said "Upon my 
honor." Swift's reply to Serjeant Bettesworth ap- 
proached a shade nearer the fact : — 

" Mr. Bettesworth, I was in my youth acquainted with 
great lawyers, who, knowing my disposition to satire, advised 
me that if any scoundrel or blockhead whom I had lam- 
pooned should ask, ' Are you the author of this paper ? ' I 
should tell him that I was not the author : and therefore 
I tell you, Mr. Bettesworth, that I am not the author of these 
Hnes." 

A writer in a recent Quarterly Review * aj^pears to be 
for exact truth at all risks ; saying that the question 
really is, whether impertinence in one person will justify 
falsehood in another ; and maintaining that, if the least 
departure from veracity is admitted in any instance, 
there is no saying where the thing will end. 

Archbishop Whately is reluctant to advise a depar- 
ture from the truth in any case, but advises a method of 
meeting prying questioners which we trust reviewers 
will make use of on occasion. We quote the passage in 
which his advice occurs ; it is admii'able for point and 
pungency : — 

" A well-known author once received a letter from a peer 
with whom he was slightly acquainted, asking him whether 
he was the author of a certain article in the Edinburgh Re- 
view. He replied that he never made communications of 
that kind, except to intimate friends, selected by himself for 
the purpose, when he saw fit. His refusal to answer, how- 
ever, pointed him out — which, as it happened, he did not 
care for — as the author. But a case might occur in which 
the revelation of the authorship might involve a friend in 

* Quarterly Keview, Vol. XCIX. p. 302. 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 283 

some serious difficulties. In any sucli case, he might have 
answered something in this style : ' I have received a letter 
purporting to be from your lordship, but the matter of it in- 
duces me to suspect that it is a forgery by some mischievous 
trickster. The writer asks whether I am the author of a 
certain article. It is a sort of question which no one has a 
right to ask ; and I think, therefore, that every one is bound 
to discourage such inquiries by answering them — whether 
one is or is not the author — with a rebuke for asking imper- 
tinent questions about private matters. I say ' private,' be- 
cause, if an article be libellous or seditious, the law is open, 
and any one may proceed against the publisher, and compel 
him either to give up the author or to bear the penalty. If, 
again, it contains false statements, these, coming from an 
anonymous pen, may be simply contradicted. And if the 
arguments be unsound, the obvious course is to refute them. 
But who wrote it is a question of idle or of mischievous curi- 
osity, as it relates to the private concerns of an individual. 

" ' If I were to ask your lordship, ' Do you spend your in- 
come ? or lay by ? or outrun ? Do you and your lady ever 
have an altercation ? Was she your first love ? or were you 
attached to some one else before ? ' If I were to ask such 
questions, your lordship's answer would probably be, to desire 
the footman to show me out. Now, the present inquiry I re- 
gard as no less unjustifiable, and relating to private concerns, 
and therefore I think every one bound, when so questioned, 
always, whether he is the author or not, to meet the inquiry 
with a rebuke. 

'" Hoping that my conjecture is right, of the letter's being 
a forgery, I remain,' &c. 

" In any case, however, in which a refusal to answer does 
not convey any information, the best way, perhaps, of meet- 
ing impertinent inquiries, is by saying, ' Can you keep a se- 
cret ? ' and when the other answers that he can, you may 
reply, ' Well, so can I.' " — (pp. 68, 69.) 



284 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

There are some admirable remarks unrler the head of 
the Essay on " Parents and Children," upon the pro- 
priety of considering in what direction a boy's talents 
lie, in making choice of a profession for him. Too fre- 
quently, when we speak of a boy's mind having a bent 
to some particular course, it is understood that what is 
meant is, that he has an extraordinary genius for it ; but 
it is to be remembered that — 

" numbers of men. who would never attain any extraordinary 
eminence in anything, are yet so constituted as to make a 
very respectable figure in the department that is suited for 
them, and to fall below mediocrity in a different one." — 
(pp. 72, 73.) 

Mr. Thackeray would be delighted with the short 
Annotations on the Essay " Of Nobility." It is in the 
nature of the Anglo-Saxon race to worship rank ; and 
when (as in the United States) rank is altogether ig- 
nored, the very violence of the reaction from the way in 
which things are done on this side of the Atlantic, indi- 
cates how resolute is the bent of the species in the 
contrary direction. It is the man who has a strong dis- 
position to fall down at the feet of a duke that is most 
likely to deny a duke, because he is one, the courtesy 
due to a man. We think that Archbishoi? Whately holds 
the balance very fairly between the two extremes : — 

" In reference to nobihty in individuals, nothing was ever 
better said than by Bishop Warburton — as is reported — in 
the House of Lords, on the occasion of some angry dispute 
which had arisen between a peer of noble family and one of 
a new creation. He said that, ' High birth was a thing 
which he never knew any one disparage, except those who 
had it not ; and he never knew any one make a boast of it 
who had anything else to be proud of 



ARCHBISHOP WHATKLY ON BACON. 285 

" It was a remark by a celebrated man, himself a gentle- 
man born, but with nothing of nobility, that the difference 
between a man with a long line of noble ancestors and an 
upstart is, that ' the one knows for certain what the other 
only conjectures as highly probable, that several of his fore- 
fathers deserved hanging.'" — (pp. 121, 122.) 

In the Annotations on the Essay " Of Friendship," the 
Archbishop puts down, by irresistible force of argument, 
one of the most silly, mischievous, purposeless, and 
groundless errors which have ever been taught : we 
mean the doctriiie that in a future life, happy souls vrill 
be no longer capable of special individual friendship. 
We have often been filled with burning indignation at 
finding in the book of some empty-headed divine who 
never learned logic, or in the sermon of some popular 
preacher thoroughly devoid of sense, taste, scholarship, 
modesty, and the reasoning faculty, lengthy tirades 
about the perfection of another world consisting much in 
an entire elevation above such earthly things as specific 
attachments. We have seen and heard it stated that in 
a future life blessed spirits will never remember or 
recognize those who were dearest to them in this ; and 
perhaps, indeed, will not remember or recognize their 
OW'U identity. It is satisfactory to know that this doc- 
trine is as groundless as it is revolting ; and most truly 
does Archbishop Whately say, that — 

" this is one of the many points in which views of the eternal 
state of the heirs of salvation are rendered more uninterest- 
ing to our feelings, and consequently more uninviting, than 
there is any need to make them." 

There is much social wisdom in the remarks upon the 
Essay " Of Expense." And here the Archbishop, m a 



286 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

graver tone, propounds a like philosophy to that which 
Mr. Thackeray has in several of his writings enforced 
so well. It would be hard to reckon up the misery and 
anxiety which are produced in this country by absurd 
and foolish straining to " keep up appearances " ; that 
is, with five hundred a year to entertain precisely like a 
man with five thousand, and generally to present a false 
face to the world, and seem other than what one is. 
"When will this curse of our civihzed life cease ? Surely, 
if people knew how transparent are all the pretences by 
which they think to pass for wealthy folk, — how readily 
neighbors see through them, — how incomparably more 
respectable and more respected is sterling yet un- 
affected honesty in this matter, — this foolish display 
would cease, and the analogous forms of deception would 
cease with it. No one is taken in by them. Any one 
who knows the world knows thoroughly how, by an 
accompanying process of mental arithmetic, to make the 
deductions from the big talk or the pretentious show of 
some people, which are needed to bring the appearance 
down to the reality. The green-grocer got in for the 
day is never mistaken for the family butler. The fly 
jobbed by tlie hour is easily distinguished from the 
brougham which it personates. And when Mr. Smith 
or Mrs. Jones talks largely of his or her aristocratic 
acquaintances, mentioning no name without " a handle 
to it," no one is for a moment misled into the belief that 
of such is the circle of society in which Mrs. Jones or 
Mr. Smith moves. 

In the Annotations on the " Regimen of Health," 
there are some useful remarks upon early and late 
hours, and upon times of study, which we commend to 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 287 

the notice of hard-working college-men. And these 
remarks close with the following suggestive para- 
graph : — 

" Of persons who have led a temperate life, those will have 
the best chance of longevity who have done hardly anything 
but live ; what may be called the neuter verbs, — not active 
or passive, but only being ; who have had little to do, little 
to suffer ; but have led a life of quiet retirement, without 
exertion of body or mind, avoiding all troublesome enter- 
prise, and seeking only a comfortable obscurity. Such men, 
if of a pretty strong constitution, and if they escape any re- 
markable calamities, are likely to live long. But much 
affliction, or much exertion, and, still more, both combined, 
will be sure to tell upon the constitution, if not at once, 
yet at least as years advance. One who is of the character 
of an active or passive verb, or, still more, both combined, 
though he may be said to have lived long in everything but 
years, will rarely reach the age of the neuters." — (p. 305.) 

" It is better," said Bishop Cumberland, " to wear 
out than to rust out " ; yet there can be no question that 
when the energies of body and mind are husbanded, 
they will go further and last longer. Kever to light 
the candle is the way to make it last forever. Yet it 
may suffice the man who has crowded much living into 
a short life, to think that he has " lived long in every- 
thing but years." 

'' We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
In feelings, not in figures on a dial. 
We should coimt time by heart-throbs. He most lives, 
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." * 

In remarking on the Essay " Of Suspicion," the Arch- 
bishop writes as foUows : — 

* Bailey's Ftsius. 



288 ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 

" Multitudes are haunted by the spectres, as it were, of 
vague surmises and indefinite suspicions, which continue thus 
to haunt them, just because they are vague and indefinite, 
because the mind has never ventured to look them boldly in 
the face, and put them into a shape in which reason can 
examine them." — (p. 317.) 

A valuable practical lesson is to be drawn from the 
principle here laid down. Only experience can con- 
vince a man how wonderfully the mind's burden is 
lightened, by merely getting a clear view of what it has 
to do or bear or encounter. Some persons go through 
life in a ceaseless worry, oppressed and confused by an 
undefined feeling that they have a vast number and 
variety of things to do, and never feeling at rest or easy 
in their minds. If any man would just take a piece of 
paper and note down upon it what work he has to do, 
he will be surprised to find how much less formidable it 
will look ; not that it will necessarily look little, but 
that the killing thing, the vague sense of undefined 
magnitude, will be gone. So it is with troubles, so 
with doubts. If any one who is possessed with the 
general impression that he is an extremely ill-used and 
unhappy man, would write down the special items of 
his troubles, even though the list should be of consid- 
erable length, he will find that matters are not so bad 
after all. There is nothing, we believe, that so aggra- 
vates all evil to the minds of most men, as when the 
sense of the vague, indeterminate, and innumerable, is 
added to it ; and we are strong believers in the power 
of the 'pen to give most people clear and well-defined 
thoughts. 

We may particularize as especially worthy of atten- 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 289 

tion, Archbishop Whately's observations on the different 
periods of life at which different men attain their mental 
maturity (pp. 403, 404) ; on the license of counsel in 
pleading a client's cause (pp. 509-512) ; on the ne- 
cessity of the forms and ceremonies of etiquette, even 
among the closest friends (p. 479) ; and upon the 
causes of sudden popularity (pp. 500-502). Students 
will find some valuable advice at pp. 460, 461 ; and 
young preachers, at pp. 323, 324. Dissenting ministers, 
and other persons who pretend an entire contempt for 
worldly wealth, either because the grapes hang beyond 
their reach, or from envy of people who are more for- 
tunate, may turn with advantage to pp. 350, 351. 
Those amiable individuals who are wont to express 
their satisfaction that such an acquaintance has met 
with some disappointment, because it will do him good, 
are referred to the Archbishop's keen and just remark 
upon such as bestow posthumous praise upon a man 
whom they reviled and calumniated during his life, and 
may profitably consider whether the real motive from 
which they speak is not highly analogous : — 

" It may fairly be suspected that the one circumstance re- 
specting him which they secretly dwell on with the most 
satisfaction, though they do not mention it, is that he is dead ; 
and that they dehght in bestowing their posthumous honors 
on him, chiefly because they are posthumous ; according to 
the concluding couplet in the Verses on the Death of Dean 
Swift : — 

" And since you dread no further lashes, 
Methinks you may forgive his ashes." 

-(p. 19.) 

We must draw our remarks to a close. We feel how 
imperfect an idea we have given of Archbishop Whate- 
13 s 



290 



ARCHBISHOP WHATELY ON BACON. 



ly's Annotations, — of their range, their cogency, their 
wisdom, their experience, their practical instruction, 
their wit, their eloquence. The extracts we have quoted 
are like a sheaf of wheat brought from a field of a hun- 
dred acres ; but we trust our readers may be induced to 
study the book for themselves. 




CHAPTER XVI 



SOME FURTHER TALK ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 

A Letter to the Editor of " Eraser's Magazine." 

[In a former volume of Essays,* I filled a few pages with a. letter 
written to the editor of Fraser's Magazine by my neighbor and 
friend, Mr. Macdonald of Craig-Houlakim. That letter, when pub- 
lished in the Magazine, excited so much interest, that Mr. Macdonald 
was easily persuaded to follow it with another similar one ; and, though 
not going all my friend's length, I have to confess the substantial 
truth of his statements. A little space in the present volume will 
not unfitly be spared for his epistle.J 




General Assembly Hall, Castle-Hill, 
Edinburgh, May 29, 1857. 

Y DEAR Editor : — A happy thought has 
just occurred to me. I am sitting here on 
one of the back benches of the General As- 
sembly of the Kirk of Scotland, to which 
venerable Court the Presbytery of Whistle-binkie, with 
much appreciation of real merit, has sent me as one of 
its lay representatives. In company with some four or 
five hundred more, clergymen and laymen, I am legis- 
lating for the ecclesiastical good of the people of Scot- 
land. I have been engaged in this work for a week 
past, and shall be for several days longer. I am look- 
* Leisure Hours in Town, Chapter XIV. 



292 SOME FURTHER TALK 

ing out at this moment on a sea of anxious faces, inter- 
spersed with many bald heads. The atmosphere is hot 
and feverish. As I write, an outsider, name unknown, 
is making a speech to which nobody is hstening A 
booming sound of Oarrdurr occasionally proceeds from 
the chair when the hum of conversation grows into a 
roar ; for my good friend Professor Robertson has been 
elevated to the dignity of moderator, and has taken his 
Aberdeenshire accent along with him. For the last 
week I have been kept here to all hours of the night, 
and I am uncommonly sleepy ; and so it has occurred 
to me that in the intervals when the business of the 
House becomes devoid of interest, I might beguile 
the time by writing a letter to you, and indulging in a 
little further dissertation on the affairs of my adopted 
country. 

When I last wrote to you, it was on a gloomy day in 
the end of November, — just that season when you 
London folk, who do not know anything better, delude 
yourselves into the belief that a town life is preferable 
to a country one. Since then we have seen once more, 
what I trust I never shall see without leaping-up of the 
heart, the gradual revival of the spring. Snowdrops 
and crocuses came and went ; the birch grew fragrant, 
and the pine was tipped with delicate green ; the prim- 
roses sprang in the woods ; and although the dire east 
winds held all vegetation back for weeks beyond the 
usual period, yet when I left home to come to the As- 
sembly, I thought, with a grudge, that for many a day 
I must forego the blossoming lilacs and hawthorns, the 
fruit-trees bending with their weight of bloom, the soft 
green of the beeches, and the floral glory of the horse- 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 293 

chestnuts, around my Highland home. There is no 
place like the country, after all. But upon that subject 
you and I shall not agree, so I had better say no more 
about it. 

Sitting in this atmosphere, my thoughts naturally 
take an ecclesiastical direction ; and -while I look at this 
great company of men, almost all well-educated, and 
many of them possessing high ability, who from Sunday 
to Sunday and from day to day are devoting their ener- 
gies to the religious instruction of the Scotch people, the 
first reflection which rises to my mind is, the total sever- 
ance which exists in many parts of Scotland between a 
sound creed and a righteous practice. Few things sur- 
prise me more than the utter lack of practical force in 
Scotch orthodoxy. I have no doubt that the same thing 
must be lamented in all countries, by all who are anx- 
ious for the moral elevation of mankind ; but I believe 
that Scotland is the country which exhibits the evil in 
its most striking form. You can hardly find a church 
in this country in which sound doctrine is not regularly 
preached ; you can hardly find in country places a child 
that has not been carefully instructed in the Shorter Cat- 
echism^ or a grown-up man or woman who does not 
make some profession of religion, by attending church 
and receiving the Sacrament ; but you would be re- 
garded as an arrant simpleton if you fancied that nine 
farmers out of ten whom you saw most exemplary at 
their devotions on Sunday would not cheat you on 
Monday, if doing so would put five shillings in their 
pocket. Of course, you have plenty of grocers in Eng- 
land who mix sand with their sugar, and sugar with 
their tea ; and abundance of farmers who will sell you a 



294 SOME FURTHER TALK 

lame horse as a sound one if they have an opportunity ; 
but if such a man among you English folk were scru- 
pulous in maintaining morning and evening prayer in 
his family, and given to shedding tears in church at the 
practical pieces of the sermon, you would certainly con- 
clude that he was adding hypocrisy to his other sins. 
Not so here. You would judge quite too severely were 
you to conclude that a Scotch farmer was a hypocrite, 
because you found him shaking his head sympatheti- 
cally at the minister's warnings on Sunday, and then on 
the following market-day at Whistle-binkie declaring 
solemnly that he had paid fifty pounds for a broken- 
winded nag which he had really bought for five. The 
true state of the case is that our friend Mr. Pawkie 
does not feel that his religious belief has any connection 
whatever with his daily life. These are quite separate 
things in his mind. It is one thing for a doctrine to be 
perfectly right in a sermon, and quite another for it to 
be an axiom safe to act upon in the grain -market or at 
the Falkirk Tryst. 

Last Sunday, instead of remaining in Edinburgh, and 
getting several ribs broken in an attempt to get into the 
High Kirk to hear the " Sermon before the Commis- 
sioner," I preferred going quietly into the country with 
a friend who has a sweet place a few miles off, and at- 
tending church with him. As we walked through the 
quiet morning to the ivy-covered little kirk, surrounded 
by a host of mouldering gravestones, on which a hand- 
ful of simple-looking country folk were seated, awaiting 
the hour of prayer, I should certainly have fancied that 
the people were as Arcadian in innocence as the scene 
was in peacefulness, had I not lived in Scotland for 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 295 

some ten years past. While service was going on, I 
was especially struck by the devout and sympathetic 
attention of a venerable old fogy, apparently a respec- 
table farmer, with long white hair and a most benevolent 
expression. The sermon, which was an excellent one, 
was upon the duty of mutual forbearance and kindliness ; 
its text was, " Forgive us our debts as we forgive our 
debtors." The good old man's face was lighted up, and 
he shook his head, and gently waved his hand in sym- 
pathy with the sentiments expressed by the preacher. 
You would have said that he was recognizing the pa- 
thetic delineation of the principles on which he was 
himself acting in his daily life of charity and good will. 
At length the sermon was finished, and the minister, as 
is usual here, read the parting hymn. An expression 
of high and holy joy beamed upon the patriarch's coun- 
tenance as he listened to it; he laid his head back, 
closed his eyes, and lifted his hand as though engaged in 
silent prayer, as the clergyman read the lines : — 

" Let such as feel oppression's load 
Thy tender pity share ; 
And let the helpless, homeless poor, 
Be thy pecuhar care. 

" Go, bid the hungry orphan be 
With thy abundance blest; 
Invite the wanderer to thy door, 
And spread the couch of rest." 

In walking home from church, I made inquiry of my 
friend as to the benevolent and pious old gentleman 
whose bearing had so charmed me. He tvas a farmer, 
as I had surmised ; a man paying some eight hundred 
a year of rent, and enjoying a good income. I learned 



296 SOME FURTHER TALK 

in addition to this, that he waS a thorough-going old 
scoundrel ; a notorious cheat, swearer, drunkard, and 
worse. He had palmed off more lame horses than any 
man in the county, and told more lies in his time than 
would sink a man-of-war. The last of his doings, which 
he accomplished two days before I saw him, was seizing 
the bed from under a poor widow whose husband had 
died a few months previously, and who had been wear- 
ing her fingers to the bone to support her little children, 
but had failed to pay the old rascal a most exorbitant 
rent for a miserable hovel upon his ground. Yet this 
man was the most exemplary in the parish in his atten- 
tion to the ordinances of religion : he never w^as absent 
from a sacrament ; and on the Sunday after seizing the 
widow's poor sticks of furniture, I beheld him, radiant 
with holy joy, wagging his head and waving his hand in 

the church of C . How I wished I were the Emperor 

of Russia, and the old gentleman one of my subjects. 
Should not I have given him a taste of the knout! 
shouldn't I have made him howl ! 

As I write these words. Professor Pirie of Aberdeen 
rises to make a speech. He begins, " Aw doant see 
thawt, Moaderahturr," as he raises his fist in the air. 
Had it been Mr. Phin, or Dr. Tulloch, or Mr. McLeod, 
I should have prepared to listen with all attention ; but 
as it is quite certain that Mr. Pirie's speech will not be 
worth listening to, and equally certain that it will be a 
long one, I shall occupy its duration m telling you some- 
thing about a very interesting Scotch institution, — that 
of our parish schools. 

During the month of March, in that part of the coun- 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 297 

V 

try in which I reside, two days in each week are de- 
voted to the examination of the schools by committees 
of the Presbytery ; and as I feel a good deal of interest 
in the great education question, and am anxious to know 
the true condition of Scotland in regard to the training 
of the young, I accompanied my friend, the parish 
clergyman, this year to the examination of seven or 
eight of the neighboring schools. You must understand 
that every parish in Scotland has its parish school, as 
certainly as its parish church ; and in these schools gen- 
erally a sound, fair education may be obtained, quite 
adequate to the circumstances of the Scottish peasantry. 
Reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion as set out in 
the Catechism of the Scotch Church, are taught to all 
comers, without distinction of sect. The result of the 
existence of these schools is, that except in the large 
cities, in which the population has outgrown their reach, 
all Scotch men and women are able to read and write. 
Hardly ever is a bride or bridegroom under the neces- 
sity of affixing a cross to the registration paper, from 
want of capacity to sign the name. These parish 
schools are to all intents a part of the National Church. 
They are endowed from its revenues, their teachers must 
be churchmen, and they are under the supervision of the 
Presbytery of the district. A committee, consisting of 
three or four clerical members of the Presbytery, yearly 
examines each school ; and I can testify from personal 
experience that the examination is no sham. Those at 
which I was this year present lasted from five to nine 
hours each. 

The salaries of the schoolmasters are shamefully in- 
adequate. They average some twenty-five pounds 

13* 



298 SOME FURTHER TALK 

a year in most cases, with a dwelling-house. The 
school-houses are often wretchedly bad. The build- 
ings are maintained, and the salaries are paid, by the 
heritors; and you will be able to judge, from what I 
told you in my last letter, how much is in many cases to 
be expected from their liberality. Where the parish is 
large, — and parishes of twelve and fourteen miles in 
length are common, even in the Lowlands, — there are 
sometimes three or four schools ; and in such cases this 
princely endowment is divided among their teachers. 
Besides the endowment, the teachers in all cases receive 
the school fees paid by the children. These fees vary 
from eighteen-pence to four or five shillings a quarter, 
according to the number of branches tauojht. The 
number of children attending a parish school may aver- 
age from fifty to a hundred. I have known cases in 
which the numbers amounted to two and even three 
hundred ; but these instances are rare, and then we find 
the teacher claiming for his school the more ambitious 
designation of academy. Many parochial teachers de- 
rive an increase of income from the Privy Council 
grants ; but . with that curious jealousy of state inter- 
ference in reliofious matters which is iusfrained into the 
Scotch character, many eminent clergymen refuse to 
receive the grant on the accompanying condition that 
the government inspector shall annually examine the 
school. This, it is maintained by some, with a feeling 
which appears to me Quixotic in the extreme, implies a 
doubt of the sufficiency of the examination by the Pres- 
bytery. 

The Scotch parish schoolmaster toils away from nine 
o'clock in the morning till three or four in the afternoon, 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 299 

with a single hour's intermission for dinner. He teaches 
the alphabet, four or five reading classes, geography, 
history, arithmetic, writing, Latin, Greek, French, ge- 
ometry, and algebra. I have seen all these things 
taught, and well taught, by a man who had not forty 
pounds a year. In remote country districts, the ele- 
mentary branches only are taught ; but there are very 
few schools in which there is not a Latin class. I ven- 
ture to assert that the parish schools are for the most 
part extremely well, and in many instances admirably, 
taught ; and any one who says otherwise must be alto- 
gether ignorant of the facts. The teachers are, with 
rare exceptions, quite exemplary in conduct, and almost 
always very intelligent men ; many exhibit an energy 
and spirit in conducting their classes which are extraor- 
dinary. They teach all the year round, except six 
weeks in autumn. The holidays are at that season, 
in order that the children may work in the harvest field, 
reaping or attending upon the reapers. Lideed, it is a 
matter of^eneral complaint in country districts that the 
children are frequently taken away from school to eke 
out their parent's earnings by field-work. A child of 
seven or eight years old can earn eightpence a day in 
weeding turnips in the season. But when he returns to 
school after some weeks' absence, the teacher finds that 
he has forgotten all he had learned before. 

I have seen school-rooms of all different degrees. 
Sometimes they are spacious and airy, the walls well 
furnished with maps and pictures, and presenting a 
general aspect of cheerfulness and comfort. Much 
more frequently I have found them wretched, ill-ven- 
tilated, over-crowded apartments, with bare walls green 



300 SOME FURTHER TALK 

with damp, a moist earthen floor worn into deep hol- 
lows, and a ceiling from which the plaster had fallen in 
large patches. The forms and desks were rickety and 
creaking, cut almost in pieces by the knives of successive 
generations of school-boys ; and the entire impression 
left by the place was stupefying and disheartening to 
the last degree. Shabby heritors find a pretext for 
allowing this state of things to continue, in the pros- 
pect of such a legislative act as shall put the entire 
educational system of Scotland upon a new footing. 
I heartily hope, my dear friend, that the day may not 
be far distant that shall give our hard-working parish 
teachers something like decent salaries, — fifty pounds 
a year is the highest salary contemj^lated, — and that 
shall rid us of those miserable school-buildings in which 
a boy is driven stupid by the din and the stifling atmos- 
phere ; but I cannot see why this should not be done 
without taking the parish schools from under the super- 
intendence of the Church. Whatever may have been 
the case in past days, when both the churches f»f Britain 
were comatose enough, I can assure you that now the 
superintendence of the Presbytery is most effective and 
vigilant ; and I can assure you, likewise, that the people 
of Scotland, as a whole, have perfect confidence in the 
schools as at present constituted. All sects of dissenters 
send their children most willingly to the parish school. 
The Lord Advocate, who has brought into Parliament 
repeated bills for separating the schools from the 
Church, is a mere tool in the hands of the leaders of the 
"Free Kirk." That "body" has built schools of its 
own in many parishes ; and finding that it cannot sup- 
port them, would like to get them taken off* its hands. 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 301 

This the Lord Advocate's bill would do. I do not ex- 
pect, ifly dear editor, that you will entirely sympathize 
with me in what you may possibly regard my old-fash- 
ioned and illiberal notions upon this point ; but they are 
the result of a good deal of observation and no little 
reflection, and I hold them firmly. 

A great day in the parish is that of the school exami- 
nation. The children are all assembled betimes, with 
clean faces, and in their Sunday clothes. It is a time 
of solenm expectation ; and the teacher, as he walks up 
and down, giving his final directions, is a little nervous. 
The tliree or four clergymen who constitute the ex- 
amining committee at length appear. The school-room 
is crowded with parents, who have come to enjoy the 
proficiency of their children ; and a heritor or two 
may be seen, who have sought a reflected happiness in 
spending two or three pounds in prize-books, which will 
make many little hearts light and proud for longer than 
that one day. It is whispered in the school that the 
master has got a new coat, which appears to-day for the 
first time. The proceedings are opened with a prayer, 
offered by one of the presiding ministers ; then the 
classes are successively called, beginning with the young- 
est. Who could be otherwise than interested and 
sympathizmg, when two or three fluttered little things 
come up trembling, and say their ABC, making a host 
of mistakes, which they never would have made but for 
the awful presence of the Presbytery ! Who but must 
feel for the poor cottager's wife on the back form, as 
she hears her little boy going all wrong in what he said 
to her perfectly right an hour before ? Pat the little 
fellow on the head, and tell him he is a clever boy and 



302 SOME FURTHER TALK 

lias done capitally ; it will tide him over one sad dis- 
appointment of his life, and the innocent fiction will 
never rise up against you elsewhere. Then come the 
reading classes ; and here you may by degrees examine 
more sharply. Almost all read well — of course with 
the broadest Scotch accent ; almost all spell admirably, 
and most understand completely what they read. The 
reading-books in general use are a series edited by Dr. 
M'Culloch, of Greenock ; an excellent series, filled with 
pieces so attractive that children will read them for 
their interest, and almost forget that they are tasks. I 
must confess that when I have been at school examina- 
tions, I have sometimes found myself reading Dr. 
M'Culloch on my own account, instead of attending to 
the lesson that was going forward. The children gener- 
ally exhibit a thorough acquaintance with Scripture 
history ; and the Shorter Catechism, an admirable com- 
pend of sound theology, and quite in keeping with the 
Thirty-nine Articles, is at the finger-ends of all. Gram- 
mar is generally well taught ; geography, sometimes 
extraordinarily well. Specimens of the writing of the 
pupils, each on a large sheet of paper, are hung up 
round the room. The Latin and Greek classes come 
last ; and the exhibition is wound up by recitations, 
delivered by a few of the most distinguished scholars. 
Sometimes the effect of these is irresistibly ludicrous. 
A very favorite piece is Campbell's Hohenlinden. A 
boy stands up, amid awful silence, and elevating his 
right hand in the air, with a face utterly blank of ex- 
pression, proceeds to repeat the poem, accentuating 
very strongly every alternate syllable, and completely 
ignoring the points : — 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 303 

*• On Lunden whan the sahn was law 
Ul bloodless lah thuntroaden snaw 
Und dark uz wuntur wuz the flaw 
Avizar roallin rawpidlah." 

Some clergymen pride themselves on their power of 
drawing out the intelligence of children by their mode 
of putting questions to them. And occasionally I have 
seen this well done ; more frequently, very absurdly. 
The following is a specimen of a style of examination 
which I have myself more than once witnessed : — 

" Wahl, deer cheldrun, what was it that swallowed 
Jonah ? Was it a sh-sh-sh-sh-shark ? " — " Yahs ! " roar 
a host of voices. " Noa, deer cheldrun, it was not a 
shark. Then was it an al-al-al-allig-allig-alligator ? " 
" Yahs ! " exclaim the voices again. " Noa, deer chel- 
drun, it was not an alligator. Then was it a wh-wh- 
wh-whaaale ? " " Noa," roar the voices, determined to 
be right this time. " Yahs, deer cheldrun, it was a 
whale." 

The prizes are distributed ; and then each clergyman 
in turn makes a speech, expressive of his opinion of the 
appearance which the scholars have made, and also of 
the skill and industry of the teacher. This opinion is 
always complimentary ; and in cases where teacher and 
scholars are in an unsatisfactory state, it is amusing to 
witness the struggles of the speaker to say something 
which shall have a general tone of coniiDliment, and yet 
mean nothing. Finally, one of the examiners gives an 
address to the children, inculcating the general doctrine 
that they ought to be good boys and mind their lessons. 
A prayer closes the proceedings ; and then the ministers 
are off to the manse to dinner. 



304 SOME FURTHER TALK 

A great many parochial teachers add a little to their 
income by holding certain small parish offices ; such as 
those of precentor, session-clerk, inspector of poor, post- 
master, and the like. I have known all these offices 
accumulated upon one individual. Many teachers are 
very eccentric men. Indeed, one would say that no one 
but a rather singular being would continue for thirty 
or forty years in a post entailing so much toil and offer- 
ing such poor remuneration. A short time since, at a 
school examination, I found a large piece of pasteboard, 
bearing in a very legible hand the following inscription, 
written by the teacher, and evidently intended to be 
exhibited to the children : — 

«To Mr. Smith. 
^^ From a Correspondent. 

" Mr. Smith, thou art good and mild, 
Beloved by every little child, 
Thou wast formed for usefulness, 
Boys to comfort and girls to bless." 

You will hardly believe me when I tell you that the 
author of this remarkable poem was really a very 
efficient and successful teacher of young children ; and 
possibly he was quite correct in judging that to exhibit 
such an effusion as something which he had received 
from an unknown admirer would tend to make his 
pupils hold him in greater veneration. My observation 
of many parochial schoolmasters has led me to the 
belief, not only that a total want of common sense in 
the affairs of ordinary life is quite compatible with a 
man's being an excellent teacher, but even that such 
a want of common sense is directly conducive to his 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 305 

success as a teacher. I have a theory by which I think 
I can both prove and exphiin this somewhat paradoxical 
opinion ; but I need not bother you with it here. 

The very best teachers I have ever known have been 
men of no great extent of information, and of no claims 
to scholarship, but who have possessed a wonderful 
power of communicating whatever knowledge they 
had got. I have known one or two men, rather 
stupid and indiscreet in daily life, but who seemed to 
become inspired when placed in the presence of a class 
of boys or girls (for both boys and girls are educated 
at our parish schools), and who displayed a positive 
genius for putting all they had to tell their pupils in the 
most attractive and striking shape. And once or twice 
I have come across quaint, respectable old characters, 
who have kejDt school for fifty or sixty years, content in 
their humble and useful vocation ; much given to quoting- 
Latin, especially in speaking to persons who did not 
understand it ; treasuring up a little store of old classi- 
cal authors in usum Delphini, one of which you might 
find them reading in their garden on a summer day ; 
fond of talking about their old days at college, three- 
score years since ; and recounting with pride how they 
had beaten, in the Latin class at St. Andrews, men who 
had become the dignitaries of the kirk, the bar, and the 
bench ; or how they had lived for a term in the same 
lodgings with Smith, who became physician to the Court 
of St. Petersburg ; with Brown, who rose to be Prime 
Minister to the King of Ashantee ; or with Reid, who 
arrived at the dignity of an Austrian marshal. And 
philosophic men like you and me may perhaps bethink 
us, that to a Scotchman, with his yearning to the land 

T 



306 SOME FURTHER TALK 

of the mountain and tlie flood, it may have proved a 
less happy lot to rise to wordly honor far away, than to 
cuff the ears and win the hearts of many generations 
of school-boys, and to be the oracle of the neighborhood, 
the first man in his native village. 

I have already said that the close of the school ex- 
amination-day is a dinner at the manse, to which the 
schoolmasters are always asked, in addition to the 
clergymen who acted as examiners. I particularly en- 
joy dining with my parish clergymen on the days of the 
school examinations. I meet several of the neighboring 
clergy who would please you greatly ; and I listen with 
a fresh interest to their conversation about church and 
college affairs. It opens a new field to me. I hear a 
great deal of men who, like the winner of the Derby, 
are great in their own sphere, but quite unknown to the 
w^orld beyond it. I remember your telling me that you 
had never heard of our great preacher Caird till his 
sermon was published some months ago by the Queen's 
command. And I could mention the names of a score 
of Scotch preachers and professors, all great men in 
their way, but as unknown to you as is the name of the 
cook of the King of the Cannibal Islands. Now I like 
to hear about these men. I like to get an insight into 
a new set of interests and a new mode of life. I like 
to get a view of the Scotch character from a stand-point 
different from my own. 

On such an occasion lately, I listened to much lamen- 
tation over the pawhiness and want of straightforward- 
ness which are found in many country districts. Apropos 
of this, a minister who was present related how a coun- 
try clergyman who died within the last twenty years, 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIES. 307 

one Sunday astonished his congregation in the following 
manner. He announced his text with much solemnity. 
It ran thus : — 

I said in my haste, All men are liars. 

Having read this verse twice with great emphasis, he 
proceeded with his sermon in an abstracted and medita- 
tive tone. " Ay, David," he exclaimed, " you said that 
in your haste, did you ? Gif you had leeved in this 
parish, you would have said it at your leisure ! " 

" To show you," said another clergyman, " how little 
feeling many persons, even of respectable standing, have, 
that there is anything immoral in a falsehood told in the 
way of business, I will tell you what occurred to myself 
when I came to my parish, tike every minister with 
an extensive parish, I wanted a horse. I mentioned my 
need to a highly respectable farmer, who told me that 
by great good luck he knew where I could be suited at 
once. At a farm a few miles off there was for sale just 
such an animal as I wanted. I said that I should lose 
no time in going over to see the horse in question. ' Na, 
na, sir,' said my friend, with a look of remarkable 
shrewdness ; ' na, na, that will never do. If you were 
to gang over and say you wanted the beast, the farmer 
would put an extra ten or fifteen pounds on his price. 
But I '11 tell you what we '11 do. To-morrow forenoon 
I '11 drive you over to the farm, and I '11 say to the farm- 
er, ' This is Mr. Green, our new minister ; I was jist 
gieing him a bit drive to see the country. And as we 
gaed by your house jist by chance, I telled him that you 
had a bit beast to sell ; and although I didna think it 
wad suit him ava', yet it might do no harm to look at it 
at ony rate. He wasna' for comin' in, the minister, for 



308 SOME FURTHER TALK 

he hadna time ; but we have jist come in for ae minute, 
and if the beast 's at hame, ye can let us see 't ; but if 
no, it doesna matter a grain.' Noo, if I say that to him, 
he '11 think we dinna heed aboot the beast, and he '11 no 
raise the price o't.' I was quite surprised that a man of 
good character should propose to a clergyman to become 
his accomplice in a plan of trickery and falsehood ; but 
when I recovered breath, I told my man exactly what I 
thought of his proposal, and said I should want a horse 
for ever rather than get one by telling a score of lies. 
But my friend was quite unabashed by my rebuke, and 
evidently thought I was a young man of Quixotic no- 
tions of honor, of which a little longer experience of hfe 
would happily rid me." 

I was amused by a story I heard at the same time, of 
a simple-minded country parson, whose parish lay upon 
the Frith of Clyde, and so became gradually overspread 
with fashionable villas, to which families from Edinburgh 
and Glasgow resorted in summer and autumn. This 
worthy man persisted in exercising the same spiritual 
jurisdiction over these new-comers which he had been 
wont to exercise over his rustic parishioners before their 
arrival. And in particular, in his pastoral visitations, 
he insisted on examining the lady and gentleman of the 
house in The Shorter Catechism^ in the presence of their 
children and servants. It happened, one autumn, that 
the late Lord Jeffrey, after the rising ot> the Court of 
Session, came to spend the long vacation in the parish 

of L . Soon after his arrival, the minister intimated 

from the pulpit that upon a certain day he would " hold 
a diet of catechising " in the district which included the 
dwelling of the eminent judge. True to his time, he 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 309 

appeared at Lord Jeffrey's house, and requested that the 
entire establishment might be collected. This was read- 
ily done ; for almost all Scotch clergymen, though the 
catechising process has become obsolete, still visit each 
house in the parish once a year, and collect the family 
to listen to a fireside lecture. But what was Lord Jef- 
frey's consternation when, the entire household being 
assembled in the drawing-room, the worthy minister said 
in a solemn voice, " My Lord, I always begin my exam- 
ination with the head of the family. Will you tell me, 
then, 'What is Effectual Calling?'" Never was an 
Edinburgh Reviewer more thoroughly nonplussed. After 
a pause, during which the servants looked on in horror 
at the thought that a judge should not know his Cate- 
chism, his lordship recovered speech, and answered the 
question in terms which completely dumbfounded the 
minister, "Why, Mr. Smith, a man may be said to 
discharge the duties of his calling effectually when he 
performs them with ability and success."* 

As I was writing these last words, the word Episco- 
pacy caught my ear ; and looking up, I observed a cler- 
gyman, unknown to me, addressing the House. The 
matter at the moment under discussion was some bill 
which it is proposed to introduce into Parliament to re- 

* To explain Mr. Smith's consternation to an English reader, it 
may be well to give the question and answer in the form in which 
they are familiar to young Scotland. 

Question. — What is Effectual Calling? 

Answer. — Effectual Calling is the work of God's Spirit^ whereby, 
convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the 
knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and 
enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the Gospel. 



310 SOME FURTHER TALK 

move the disabilities of Scotch Episcopal ministers. The 
speaker, who spoke in the main smartly and cleverly, 
was evidently one of the last who cling to what may be 
called Presbyterian Puseyism. His speech manifested 
an enmity to prelatic government just such as many men 
in England bear towards Presbyterian. " The bishops 
of the Scotch Episcopal Church," said he, " illegally 
take to themselves territorial titles, and call themselves 
the Bishops of Glasgow, of Aberdeen, and so forth. 
Well, who cares ? They have precisely the same right 
to these designations as the pickpockets who are taken 
before the London police-magistrates have to the aliases 
which they assume. And if a Scotch soi-disant bishop 
chooses to wear an apron, what have we to do with that ? 
He is just as much entitled to wear a bit of silk as any 
other old woman. But if he goes to the pulpit with a 
cap, then indeed we have some reason to complain ; for 
all things considered, it is unjustifiable that the cap 
should not be provided with bells." The intemperate 
speech of this gentleman was succeeded by a very judi- 
cious and excellent one from Mr. Sheriflf Tait, the brother 
of the Bishop of London ; and the Assembly came to^ 
some decision which I remember appeared to me a sen- 
sible one, but I have not the faintest recollection what it 
was. 

But the little incident gave a new direction to my 
thoughts, and set me thinking upon the singular phase 
of feeling which has prevailed for some years in the 
Scotch Church. The horror of Episcopal government 
and ritual which prevailed in the minds of the founders 
of the Kirk was indescribably great. Not far from my 
door is the burying-place of two men who were hanged 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 311 

in the persecuting days ; and the inscription on the stone 
(which was often touched up by Old Mortahty) states 
that they died to bear witness " against Tyranny, Per- 
jury, and Prelacy.''^ And in the mind of most Scotch- 
men then, and in the mind of the lower orders yet, 
Prelacy is held in precisely the estimation which you 
may infer from the. connection in which it stands there. 
A liturgy and a bishop were regarded as emanations 
from the Devil. Yet now, singular to say, the Scotch 
Church contains a body of clergymen, considerable in 
point of numbers and pre-eminent in point of talent, 
which you would say at once had a strong Episcopal 
bias. 

It would be invidious to mention names, but I ven- 
ture to say that if you go to hear five out of six of our 
most distinguished preachers, you will find their prayers 
taken almost entirely from the Anglican liturgy, or from 
the writings of the men who drew up the Anglican litur- 
gy. If you should happen to converse with the ablest 
and most cultivated of the Scotch clergy, you will find 
that the wish for a liturgy is deeply felt, and almost 
universal. I was informed within the last week that 
one of the most conspicuous of the parish clergymen of 
Edinburgh has compiled a liturgy for use in his own 
church, which he intends to print and place in the hands 
of the congregation. There is a strong and growing sense 
among the educated people of Scotland that the Reforma- 
tion in this country went a great deal too far, that the 
ritual has been made repulsively bare and bald, and that 
many things were tabooed for their association with 
Popery, which formed no part of its essence, and are 
founded upon feelings and principles which are integral 



312 SOME FURTHER TALK 

parts of man's higher nature. There is a strong sense in 
this country that it was extremely absurd and wrong to 
refuse any recognition to the festivals of the Cliristian 
year. There is a very general wish for some prescribed 
form of the marriage and baptism service. There is an 
urgent demand for the introduction of a burial service ; 
and indeed to any one who has often listened to the 
beautiful words of hope and consolation which in your 
country are breathed over a Christian grave, there is 
something inexpressibly revolting in the Scotch fashion 
of laying our friends down in their last resting-place 
without one Christian word, — without a syllable to tell 
in what belief we lay them there, or a prayer that we, 
when our day comes, " through the grave, and gate of 
death, may pass to our joyful resurrection." And 
there is a strong movement, which is rigidly opposed by 
the ignorant and prejudiced, towards true ecclesiastical 
architecture. Stained glass, which would have been 
smashed half a century ago, is common in large towns ; 
and the use of the organ is evidently approaching. One 
hears it often wished that the congregation, who now sit 
silent through the entire service (except joining in the 
Psalms), should at least respond so far as to utter 
Amen at the end of the prayers ; and very many of the 
clergy take pains to have the whole worship of God 
conducted with an order and decency which the genera- 
tion before last would assuredly have thought carnal and 
legal abomination. The late Sir Henry Moncrief, who 
was minister of the West Church of Edinburgh, used to 
walk up to' his pulpit every Sunday with his hat on his 
head, to testify to the grand Knoxite doctrine that no 
reverence is due to stone and lime ; but any such pro- 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 313 

ceediiig now would excite just as much disgust for the 
pigheadedness of the individual that did it, in Scotland, 
as it would among you. 

One hears occasionally of amusing instances of the. 
pursuit of order under difficulties by the younger clergy. 
I heard of such a case the other day. The Scotch mar- 
riage service, you must know, is a very brief one. It is 
always performed by a single clergyman, who very 
rarely appears in canonicals. Two young clergymen, 
curates of a town in the west of Scotland, both (for I 
know them well) accomplished and able men, resolved 
to be the first to introduce a more imposing method. 
Accordingly, one of them having been asked to celebrate 
a marriage in town, both went to the place, arrayed in 
gown and band. One of them gave the very short ad- 
dress upon matrimonial duties which forms part of the 
service, and the other offered the prayers and received 
the declarations of the wedded couple. The parties, I 
believe, regard themselves as the only couple in Drums- 
leekie who ever were effectually and sufficiently mar- 
ried ; but dire was the wrath of the true-blue Presbyte- 
rians of the place. 

Now what is the meaning of all this? You must 
not fancy, my dear editor, that the Kirk of Scotland is 
growing ripe for amalgamation with the Church of Eng- 
land. Some members of what you might call the Epis- 
copising party in the Scotch Church are really anxious for 
union with the Anglican Church ; but by far the greater 
number of its adherents repudiate any such aim, and hold 
stoutly by Presbyterian Church-government. They say 
that they are striving for greater propriety and or- 
der in the worshij^ of God ; they maintain that although 
14 



314 SOME FURTHER TALK 

Presbytery has generally been associated with an un- 
liturgical worship and a bald ritual, there is no necessary 
connexion between them ; and they hold that, without 
going the length of Episcopal- government, they may 
borrow from the Anglican Church its architecture, its 
prayers, its baptismal and burial services. They will 
take, they say, whatever they think good in itself, with- 
out thinking it has been contaminated by the touch of 
Prelacy. The Puritan reformers, on the contrary, never 
thought of considering any right or usage on its own 
merits. The simple question was. Has this been ob- 
served in the Episcopal Church ? And if it had been 
observed there, that was quite sufficient. Right or 
wrong, it was sent packing. It would amuse you to see 
how exactly many of the most evangelical of the Scotch 
clergy, who never fail to denounce Puseyism as something 
dreadful, have copied the e very-day dress which we are 
accustomed to consider the mark of Puseyism. I look 
up now, and glance round the Assembly Hall. A few 
years ago, the regular Scotch clerical attire was a dress- 
coat and a waistcoat revealing abundance of linen. But 
now I see nothing but those silk waistcoats, buttoning to 
the throat, which I am told tailors designate as the M. 
B., or Mark of the Beast ; long frock-coats, many of 
them devoid of collars ; plain white bands round the 
neck, devoid of tie of any kind ; and cheeks from which 
the whiskers have been reaped. And did not that good 
old gentleman, Professor Robertson, when summoned in 
to take the chair of this Assembly, enter in full canoni- 
cals (which all moderators do), but wearing lavender 
kid gloves (which no moderator ever did before) ? Some 
of the quaint old ministers from the Highlands shook 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 315 

their heads at the sight, and hoped we might not all be 
Prelatists soon ! 

As to the advantage, and indeed the necessity, of a 
liturgy, I think there cannot be two opinions among un- 
prejudiced men. If you had attended a Scotch church, 
as 1 have done, for ten years, you would know what a 
horrid thing it is to see a stupid, vulgar fellow entering 
the pulpit, and to think that that man is to interpret and 
express your deepest wants for that day's worship. It 
is, indeed, a very hard task for even an able, a pious, 
and a judicious man to make new prayers each Sunday, 
suited to convey the confessions, thanksgivings, and sup- 
plications of a congregation of his fellow-men ; yet I 
have known this so well and beautifully done, that for 
one day I did not miss the liturgy, dear to me as it is. 
But you cannot count for certain upon each one of 
twelve or fourteen hundred men being possessed of com- 
mon sense ; and when you think of the painful and re- 
volting consequences of allowing a blockhead to conduct 
public prayer at his own discretion, you will feel what a 
blessing it would be if some standard were put in the 
hands of the clergy that would assure us of decency. It 
is only just to say that the prayers one generally hears 
in Scotch churches are wonderfully respectable. They 
are sometimes, indeed, rather sermons or lectures thaa 
prayers ; and are spoken at the congregation rather than 
to the Almighty. And the truth is, that even in Scot- 
land, where every minister prepares his own prayers, 
and where the prayers are very frequently bond fide ex- 
temporaneous, there is a sort of traditional liturgy ; a 
floating mass of stock phrases of prayer ; and each young 
man who goes into the Church takes up the kind of 



316 SOME FURTHER TALK 

strain which he has been accustomed to hear all his life, 
and carries it on. If you hear a decent, commonplace, 
rather stupid Scotch minister pray, every separate sen- 
tence of the prayer would fall quite familiarly on your 
ear, if you were a Scotchman. It is the regular old 
thing, only the component parts a little shuffled. Where 
the preacher is a senseless and tasteless boor, of course 
his prayers are in keeping. I have sometimes had an in- 
tense wish to throw something at the head of some vul- 
gar blockhead who was pouring forth a tide of unintelli- 
gible balderdash, in the name of a congregation of plain 
country folk, who could not understand, and still less 
join in, one syllable of the effusion. To show you that 
I am not saying this without reason, I quote a passage 
from a review of a work, entitled Eutaxia, or the Pres- 
byterian Liturgies, which appeared in a Scotch Church 
periodical edited by one of the most eminent of Scotch 
ministers : — 

" What a contrast between these prayers of Calvin and 
the ungrammatical, unprayerful exhibitions which are some- 
times heard in the pulpit! It would be a shame to many 
ministers to rush into the presence of their earthly superiors 
as they rush into the presence of their God. The prayers of 
many betray an utter want of preparation, and even of active 
thought at the time of their utterance, as is evident fi*om the 
almost absurd phrases which have become stereotyped forms, 
and which are poured forth every Sabbath in our pulpits. 
We give one instance which we have no doubt all will recog- 
nize : " We come before Thee, with our hands on our 
mouths, and our mouths in the dust, crying out," &c., while 
if one's hand is either on his mouth, or his mouth in the dust, 
crying out is out of the question, and much more so if both 
happen at once. We recollect a worthy who was in the 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 317 

habit of devoutly praying " that the time might soon come 
when Satan should be sent fai' hence, even unto the Gen- 
tiles " ; and this is a type of too many of the stock phrases 
which are repeated in the sanctuary." * 

There is no respect in which Scotch prayers generally 
are so bad as in that most important article, the confes- 
sion of sin. One would say that in such a case the 
simplest and most direct way of acknowledging unwor- 
thiness would be the fittest ; we do not know anything 
better than the familiar "We have left undone those 
things which we ought to have done, and we have done 
those things which we ought not to have done." But 
some preachers appear to think that confession should 
be set foi'th with sacred imagery, and accordingly ex- 
press this part of prayer in terms which I believe con- 
vey no clear idea to plain people. I have often heard 
such sentences as the following : — 

" We were planted as trees of righteousness, but we 
have yielded the grapes of Sodom, and the clusters of 
Gomorrah." 

A still greater favorite is the following : — 

" We have turned away from the fountain of living 
waters; and we have hewn out to ourselves cisterns, 
broken cisterns, that can hold no water." 

My final instance to show what prayer may come to, 
when intrusted, without any directory, to each individ- 
ual of a great number of men, shall be the beginning of 
a prayer which, I was told by a thoroughly credible 
friend, he himself heard delivered from a Scotch pul- 
pit : — 

"O God, Thou hast made the sun. O God, Thou 

* Edinburgh Christian Magazine^ p. 146. August, 1856. 



318 SOME FUETHER TALK 

hast made the moon. Thou hast made the stars. Thou 
hast also made the Icoamits, whech, in their eccentric 
oarbits in the immensity of space, occasionally approtch 
so neer the sun, that they are in imminent danger of 
being veetrifoyd. " 

I heartily wish, my dear editor, that you could send 
down to the Scotch Kirk a number of those clever, 
accomplished young Oxford and Cambridge men who 
wish to devote themselves to clercial labor, and who, 
from want of interest, will never get more than eighty 
pounds a year in the English Church. We can hold 
out pretty fair inducements to such ; and we need them 
sorely. The Scotch Church furnishes a remarkable 
proof of the soundness of Sydney Smith's views, that if 
you cannot make all the livings of the Church prizes, it 
is better to have a proportion of prizes and many blanks, 
than to reduce all benefices to a decent mediocrity. 
True, Sydney's plan may not tend to secure the happi- 
ness of the working clergy, but it assuredly tends to lead 
a superior class of men to enter the Church, each man 
hoping that he may be so fortunate as to draw a prize. 
I have heard wretched trash talked, to the effect that 
the right course to get a disinterested and unworldly 
clergy is to offer no temporal inducements to choose the 
clerical profession ; and when heritors resist a minister's 
getting an increase of his stipend (each minister is 
entitled to apply for what is called an augmentation 
every twenty years), they are accustomed to quote with 
high approval the dictum of some old noodle of a judge 
in past days, that " a puir (poor) church is a pure 
church." Nothing can be more absurd. Cut down the 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. ^19 

livings of any church to what you choose, and you will 
have just as many men entering its service from merce- 
nary motives as ever. All you will have secured will 
be that your recruits will be men of a lower class, to 
whom a smaller provision is an inducement. Fix all 
the livings of the Church of England at thirty pounds a 
year each, and you will have no lack of men eager to 
get them ; but they will be thirty pounds a year men. 

Now, it is a fact which cannot be denied, that 
although there are very many exceptions to the state- 
ment, the majority of the Scotch clergy are drawn from 
the lower ranks of society, and many of them testify, by 
their appearance and their entire lack of that undefina- 
ble but keenly-felt quality which marks the gentleman^ 
that they have not in any degree acquired that polish 
which the humblest origin is no bar against a man's 
attaining. As I look round this General Assembly, 
although the effect on the whole is good, and the princi- 
pal places, with one or two exceptions, are filled by men 
fitted to adorn any circle of society, I jQi am grieved to 
see here and there great loutish boors bursting out occa- 
sionally into horse-laughter, or apparently desirous of 
putting their hands and feet in their pockets, who never 
ought to have been in the Church, who cannot be sup- 
posed capable of maintaining the respect of even their 
humblest parishioners, and whom the squire of the par- 
ish would only make unhappy by asking to his table 
when he had anything but a second-chop party and en- 
tertainment. 

Now, I say it most sincerely, God forbid that I 
should think less of a man of talent and piety, though of 
ever so humble oridn. I must add, however, that so 



320 SOME FURTHER TALK 

far as my own experience has gone, the talent and piety 
and practical usefulness of the Church are found almost 
exclusively among its gentlemen. And you and I know 
well how much a man's manners affect the estimation in 
which the world holds him. You don't like to be told 
of your sins by a man whom nature made for blacking 
your boots ; for I don't hesitate to assert that almost all 
these recruits from the lowest orders are as deficient in 
talent as they are in social standing. I do not like to 
think that the spiritual interests of the country are to be 
committed to an inferior class of men ; and we know that 
Holy Writ speaks with no approval of ancient kings 
who "made priests of the lowest of the people." To 
show you that I am not singular in this feeling, I quote 
another passage from the article already referred to : — 

" What can be more disgusting than to go into a church 
where the pews are filled with people of refinement, who are 
accustomed everywhere else to order and decency, and to see 
in the pulpit, the centre of attraction, the cynosure of eyes, 
the minister of God, a coarse vulgarian who ought to have 
remained in the sphere in which he was converted ? Piety 
and earnestness make up for great defects ; still, a clergy- 
man, whether his parishioners be coalheavers, or the elite of 
a cultivated city, should always be a gentleman and a man 
of taste."* 

And now you will be surprised to be told that the 
livings of the Scotch Church average somewhat more 
than those of the Church of England. Ay, cast in 
your archbishoprics, bishoprics, deaneries, and rich rec- 
tories, then strike an average, apportioning an equal 

* Edinburgh Christian Magazine, p. 177, September, 1856. This 
magazine is (avowedly) edited by the Rev. Norman MacLeod, of 
Glasgow. 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 321 

share to each cure of souls in England, and jet Scot- 
land, with very few livings approaching a thousand 
a year, will yield a larger annual share to each of her 
charges. The average of the Kirk is, I am told, about 
two hundred and sixty pounds a year, with residence. 
And interest with patrons has little to do with a man's 
advance here. A young fellow, with a talent for popu- 
lar preaching, may very reasonably expect, by the time 
he is seven or eight and twenty, to be settled in a snug 
manse, with an income of three or four hundred a year. 
"Why is it that this does not tempt into clerical service 
those younger sons of gentlemen who are content to 
pinch themselves for years as briefless barristers, or en- 
signs and lieutenants tossed about the world with the 
chance of being shot, or clerks in government offices 
with an annual eighty pounds ? The answer must be, 
that the Church can hold out nothing further. A man 
cannot get higher. The briefless barrister may be 
chief justice of England; the ensign may become a 
peer ; the counting-house clerk, a millionnaire. Not one 
in ten thousand will, but one in twenty thousand must ; 
and each hopes that he himself is to be the lucky man. 
Now this, I take it, is one great advantage of Episco- 
pacy. It provides aims for honorable ambition. It 
holds out prizes which induce men of first-class social 
position to enter the Church. A man of the highest 
talent may enter an episcopal church without feeling 
that he is practising the unworldly self-denial of a Mar- 
tyn. Between ourselves, my dear friend, notwithstand- 
ing all we used to talk long ago at Oxford, I am quite 
satisfied that a church may be a church though it have 
no bishops ; and notwithstanding my Anglican up-bring- 
H* u 



322 SOME FURTHER TALK 

ing, I think it my duty, living in Scotland, to maintain 
(so far as I can) the church of the country ; and in the 
Church of Scotland I shall be content to die. I am not 
sure, if I were a clergyman, that I should much like to 
be ordered about by some cross-grained, crotchety old 
gentleman, neither wiser, better, nor more learned than 
myself, even if he were my bishop. And yet I see 
great good in Episcopacy ; and I see it all the more for 
having resided these years in Scotland. First, a church 
with gradations of rank provides prizes which draw in 
men of social standing ; and so long as this is a world 
of snobs, even a church will be thought the more of for 
numbering in its ranks the sons of peers. And sec- 
ondly. Episcopacy provides clergymen who rank on 
terms of equality with the highest classes in the coun- 
try. I regard this last as a most important matter. If 
a lord asks a parish clergyman, however eminent he 
may be, — say that it were Chalmers himself, — to his 
house, why, the latent feeling on both sides is, that the 
peer is rather patronizing the parson ; while if a duke 
entertains an archbishop, the nobleman receives an honor 
rather than confers one. And as the clergy will always 
be, to the vulgar mind, the embodiment or at least the 
representatives of the Church, that which improves or 
depresses their social standing affects the credit in which 
the Church will be commonly held, in a projDortionate 
degree. 

Now, as I have said, very many Scotch parsons are 
of the humblest possible extraction ; and most of these 
individuals have had no opportunity of getting a little 
jDolished up. They have not the chance that a man has 
who is going into the Church of England. If a man 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 323 

lives at Oxford for four or five years, and has his wits 
about him, he cannot but pick up some refinement from 
the class with whom he in some degree associates, and 
from the very air of tlie place. But if a man goes to 
Glasgow or St. Andrews a clodhopper, a clodhopper he 
remains to the end of his college course. While at the 
University he lives in a garret on oatmeal ; he never 
mixes in decent society ; he never sets foot in a draw- 
ing-room ; he is completely shied by the small propor- 
tion of young men of the better ranks who are his 
class-fellows ; he comes out into life a coarse, ungainly 
cub, with perhaps a certain vulgar talent which gets 
him a living at last. Then he goes out and drinks tea 
and whisky -toddy wMth the neighboring drovers and 
small farmers ; he deals in coarse jests which make one 
long to kick him ; he has an accurate knowledge of the 
points of an ox or pig ; and is much gratified when a 
drunken grazier declares that " there 's no a man goes 
to Whistle-binkie market that kens aboot a stot sae 
weel as Mr. Horrid-beast." He gains, for a time, a cer- 
tain popularity with the lowest class ; but he drives off 
the gentry of the parish to the nearest Episcopal chapel. 
' I am sure you will agree with me, my friend, when I 
say that I regard it as self-evident that the parish priest 
ought to possess the bearing, manners, and feelings of a 
gentleman. He will be the better fitted for doing his 
duty well, even among the poorest. He will be the 
more respected; and if a clergyman is not respected, 
he is useless. The poorest bodies know thoroughly 
well when the minister is jack-fellow-alike, a man who 
may be presumed upon, and when that will not do. 
Nor does this imply a grain of affected stiffness, or the 



324 SOME FURTHER TALK 

very slightest lack of cordial kindness and sympathy 
upon the part of the real gentleman. On the contrary, 
it is the vulgar boor who will walk into a decent labor- 
er's cottage with his hat on ; who will keep its mistress- 
standing while he sits ; who will rudely say that the 
preparations for dinner which he sees are far too good 
for a family in such a position ; who will abuse the poor 
toiling creature because her little girl had some cheap 
ribbons in her bonnet last Sunday at church ; and say, 
with a coarseness beyond the pigsty, that working peo- 
ple, who may soon need aid from the parish, have no 
business with ornament, but should be thankful when 
they can find food to eat.* I know, indeed, that among 
the heritors, — and every heritor with a fair rental is by 
courtesy a county gentleman, — some miserable crea- 
tures may be found who don't want to see the clergy- 
man a gentleman ; who feel that in that case, superior 
to themselves in education, ability, information, and 
probably in birth, he becomes the subject of a compari- 
son in which they come off second-best. I have heard 
a retired tradesman, who had bought a property in the 
county, and been admitted to its society because his 
misplaced aspirates made him an amusing laughing- 
stock, lay down the principle that a clergyman would 
not work if he were made too well off. I have heard 
vulgar-minded, purse-proud upstarts, taken from the 
counter, and the oil-and-color way, say, with reference 
to a neighboring parson, that the Apostle Paul did not 
keep livery-servants or drive thorough-bred horses. I 
should never argue with any one who talked in this 
fashion. Leave such vulgarity to itself, and cut the 
■^ All these particulars are taken from life. 



ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 325 

creature dead. But the unhappy thing is, that the 
social standing of the entire clerical order is injured by 
the underbred vulgarians who are found in the Church 
here and there ; men who cringe to the Pawtron, truckle 
to the laird, and sneak at the Heritors' meeting. I re- 
member being struck by a passage in a speech made by 
the late Dr. Chalmers in this Assembly, in which he 
illustrates admirably the eifect of the worldly standing 
of the clergy upon the moral estimation in which they 
will generally be held. He says : — 

" It is quite ridiculous to say that the worth of the clergy 
will suffice to keep them up in the estimation of society. 
This worth must be combined with importance. Give both 
worth and importance to the same individual, and what are 
the terms employed in describing him ? ' A distinguished 
member of society, the ornament of a most respectable pro- 
fession, the virtuous companion of the great, and a generous 
consolation to all the sickness and poverty around him.' 
These, Moderator, appear to me to be the terms peculiarly 
descriptive of the appropriate character of a clergyman, and 
they serve to mark the place which he ought to occupy ; but 
take away the importance, and leave only the worth, and 
what do you make of him ? what is the descriptive term 
applied to him now ? Precisely the term which I often find 
applied to many of my brethren, and which galls me to the 
very bone every moment I hear it, ' a fine body ' ; a being 
whom you may like, but whom I defy you to esteem ; a mere 
object of endearment ; a being whom the great may at times 
honor with the condescension of a dinner, but whom they 
will never admit as a respectable addition to their society. 
Now all that I demand of the Court of Tiends is, to be raised, 
and that as speedily as possible, above the imputation of being 
' a fine tody ' ; that they would add importance to my worth, 
and give splendor and efficacy to those exertions which have 
for their object the most exalted interests of the species." 



326 ABOUT SCOTCH AFFAIRS. 

Capital sound sense, and accurate knowledge of the 
world there ! 

Such, my dear Editor, are certain meditations, rea- 
sonings, facts, statements, and opinions, which have 
beguiled me from weariness (though they may have 
had quite a contrary effect on you) during the less in- 
teresting business of several Assembly days. It was 
good in me to think of you (and perhaps of the intellect- 
ual circle for which you monthly cater), and to com- 
bine my attendance upon my duties here with doing 
something that may amuse or inform an absent but not 
forgotten friend. But now the Assembly is drawing to 
its close : it is past eleven o'clock on the evening of the 
1st of June, and I must put my note-book in my pocket, 
and attend to the closing proceedings. Then to-morrow 
morning I shall be off homewards ; and 0, how pleas- 
ant the rush from glaring pavements, a stifling atmos- 
phere, and tedious speeches, to the bright green fields 
and the thick leaves which I know await me. My home 
has seemed shadowy and far away during these days of 
occupation here ; but now it is growing into reality 
again, as I think how a few hours are to take me back 
to it. I wonder how the horses are ? I hope the dogs 
are all well. As for the children, I hear of their wel- 
fare daily ; and I am taking with me a sufl&cient num- 
ber of squeaking dogs, musical wagons, trumpets, and 
drums, to distract the nerves of a literary man for 
weeks to come. When shall we see you again ? It 
cannot be too soon now. 

Always your sincere friend, 

C. A. MACDONALD. 



CHAPTER XVII, 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 




HERE are great people who have seen so 
much, that thej are not surprised by any- 
thing. There are silly people who have not 
^ seen very much, but who think it a fine 



thing to pretend that they are not surprised by anything. 
As for the present writer, he has seen so little that he 
feels it very strange to find himself here ; and he has 
not the least desire to pretend that he does not feel it so. 
This morning the writer awoke in a bare little cham- 
ber, curtainless and carpetless, in that great hotel at 
Lucerne in Switzerland, which is called the Schiveizer 
Hof. And having had breakfast in a very large and 
showy dining-room, along with two travelling com- 
panions, he is now standing at a window of that apart- 
ment, and looking out. Just in front, there spreads the 
green lake of Lucerne. Away to the left, is the Rigi ; 
and to the right, beyond the lake, the lofty Pilatus, in 
a tarn on whose summit tradition says the bani.shed 
governor of Judea drowned himself, stricken by con- 
science for his unjust condemnation of Christ. The 
town stands at this end of the lake : divided into, two 



328 FROM SATUEDAY TO MONDAY. 

parts by the river Eeuss, which here flows out of the 
lake in a swift green stream, running with almost the 
speed of a torrent. There is a glare of light and heat 
everywhere in the town, most of all on the broad level 
piece of ground which at this point spreads between the 
lake and several hotels. On a rising ground, a few 
hundred yards off, rising steeply from the lake, stands 
the Roman Catholic cathedral, a somewhat shabby 
building, with two lofty slender spires at its west end. 
There are cloisters round it ; and from several openings 
in the wall, on the side towards the lake, you have 
delightful peeps of the green water below, and of snow- 
capped hills beyond. If you enter that cathedral at 
almost any time, you will find its plain interior filled 
by a large congregation ; and you will hear part of the 
service boisterously roared out by priests of unprepos- 
sessing aspect. Why do the Roman priests so furiously 
bellow ? 

This is a Saturday morning in August, — a beautiful 
bright morning. 

There is no part of the week that is so well remem- 
bered by many people as the period from Saturday to 
Monday, including both the former and the latter 
days. That season of time has a character of its own ; 
and many pleasant visits and expeditions have been 
comprised within it. Every one can sympathize with 
the poet Prior, and can understand the picture he calls 
up, when he describes himself as " in a little Dutch 
chaise on a Saturday night ; on his left hand his Horace, 
and a friend on his right," going out to the country to 
stay till Monday with the friend so situated. I fear, 
indeed, that Prior would not go to church on the Sun- 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 329 

day, wliich I can only regret. But I am going to 
spend this time in a way as different as may be from 
that in which I am accustomed to spend it, or in which 
I ever spent it before. 

"When the writer arises on common Saturdays, the 
thing he has in prospect is several quiet hours spent in 
going over the sermons he has to preach on the follow- 
ing day. I suppose that most clergymen who do their 
work as well as they can, do on Saturday morning after 
breakfast walk into their study, and sit down in that 
still retreat to work. And if, on other days, you are 
thinking all the while you are at work there of ten 
sick people you have to see, and of a host of other 
matters that must be attended to out of doors, you will 
much enjoy the affluent sense of abundant time for 
thinking, which you will have if you make it a rule 
that on Saturdays you shall do no pastoral nor other 
parochial work. Then you ought to take a long walk 
in the afternoon, and mve the evenincr to entire rest, 
refreshing your mind by some light, cheerful reading. 

This advice, however, need not be prolonged ; as it 
is addressed to a limited order of men, and to men who 
are not likely to take it. And to-day, instead of sitting 
down to work, there is something quite different to be 
done. 

For it is time to cease looking out of the window at 
the Schweizer Hof, and to walk the short distance to the 
spot where a little steamer is preparing to start. The 
baggage of the three travellers is contained in three 
black leather bags of modest size. The steamer de- 
parts, and leaves the town behind ; but to-day, instead 
of sailing the length of the lake, to where it ends amid 



o30 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

the wilds of Uri, we turn to the right hand into a re- 
tired bay, which gradually shallows, till the depth of 
water becomes very small. Pilatus is on the right, 
and the place where in former days there used to be the 
Slide of Alpnach. The sides of Pilatus are covered 
with great forests, the timber of which would be of 
great use if it could be readily got hold of. And the 
vSlide was made for the purpose of bringing down great 
trees from spots from which any ordinary conveyance 
would be impossible. So a trough of wood was formed, 
eight miles in length, beginning high up the mountain, 
and ending at the lake. It was six feet ^de, and four 
feet deep : a stream of water was made to flow through 
it, to lessen friction. It wound about to suit the ground, 
and was carried, bridge-like, over three deep ravines. 
The trees intended to be sent down by it were stripped 
of bark and branches, and then launched away. The 
biggest tree did the eight miles in six minutes, tearing 
down with a noise like thunder, an avalanche of wood. 
Sometimes a tree leapt out of the sHde, in mid career, 
and was instantly smashed to atoms. 

The steamer stops at a rude little wharf, near which 
a great lumbering diligence is waiting, very clumsy, but 
comfortable. Six horses draw it, whose harness, made 
mainly of rope, is covered with bells, that keep up a 
ceaseless tinkle as we go. In Britain, we wish a car- 
riage to run as quietly as possible ; in Switzerland, they 
like a good deal of noise. We go slowly on, into the. 
Canton of Unterwalden, by the little town of Sarnen, 
along a valley richly wooded. For a while, the road is 
level, then we begin to climb. And now, as is usual 
with British travellers, we get out and walk on, leaving 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 331 

tlie diligence to follow. We are entering the Brunig 
Pass. In former days, it could be traversed only on 
foot or on mules ; now a carriage road has been made, 
a marvel of skilful engineering. We walk up a long 
steep ascent. On the left hand, far below, are little green 
lakes, and scattered chalets ; on the rio-ht, rude hills. 
Every here and there a little stream from the hills 
crosses the road. It is now a mere trickling thread of 
water ; but acres on either side of it, covered with huge 
stones, testify what a raging torrent it must be in winter. 
So we go on, till we reach a spot where we are to wit- 
ness a piece of ingenuity combined with bad taste. Turn 
out of the highway by a little path to the right, and you 
come in two hundred yards to a sawmill, driven by an 
impetuous little stream. Where does the stream come 
from ? It seems to issue out of the rocky wall, which a 
quarter of a mile above the sawmill here crosses the lit- 
tle upland valley. You follow the stream towards its 
source. You reach the rocky wall. And there, sure 
enough, violently rushing out through a low-browed dark 
tunnel, which it quite fills, you see the origin of the 
stream. What is on the other side of the rocky wall ? 

Why, there is a considerable lake, which was once a 
great deal bigger. The Lake of Lungern was once a 
beautiful sheet of water, with fine wood coming down to 
its margin. But the people of the valley thought that, 
by partially draining the lake, they might get some hun- 
dreds of acres of valuable land, and all consideration of 
the picturesque had to give way. The tunnel we have 
seen lowered the water in the lake by a hundred and 
twenty feet, and diminished its size to half. With great 
labor, the work of nineteen thousand days given by the 



332 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

peasjints, the tunnel was made, beginning at its lower 
end, through the rocky ridge, to within six feet of the 
water at the end of the lake. These six feet of friable 
rock were blown up with gunpowder, fired by three dar- 
ing men who instantly fled ; and in a few minutes a black 
stream of mud and water appeared at the lower end of 
the tunnel. The traveller, returning by the sawmill to 
the road, goes on till he reaches the village, whence you 
may see a bare, ugly tract of five hundred acres, dotted 
with wooden chalets, gained by spoiling the lake. 

Passing through the village, you climb on and on ; 
the diligence makes no sign of overtaking you. You 
reach the summit at last, 3,600 feet above the sea ; 
whence you have a grand view of the vale of Hasli. 
Those tremendous snowy peaks beyond are the peaks 
of the Wetterhorn, one of the grandest of the Alps. 
All this way the road has been very lonely, but always 
richly wooded. Now you begin to go down. The road 
winds along the side of the mountain, cut out of the 
rock. In some places it is a mere notch, with great 
masses of rock hanging over far beyond its outer edge. 
And so, broken by a pause for some bread and wine at 
a little wayside inn, the day goes on towards evening. 

All this while, one is trying to feel that it is Satur- 
day, the familiar day one knows at home ; for some- 
how it seems quite different. And in this strange coun- 
try, where you are a foreigner, you feel yourself quite 
a different person from what you used to be at liome. 
No doubt, by having two travelling companions from 
Britain, you keep a little of the British atmosphere 
about you. If you were walking down now into Hasli 
all alone, you would be much more keenly aware of 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 333 

the genius of the place. All your life and your interests 
at home would grow quite shadowy and unreal. But 
this is one thing that makes a holiday season in a for- 
eign country deliver you so thoroughly from your home 
burden of care and labor. How very lightly the charge 
of one's parish rests upon one when the parish is a 
thousand miles away! The thing which at home is 
always pressing on you so heavily, grows light, at that 
distance, as one of those colored air-balls of India- 
rubber. 

And now, as the light is fading somewhat, the great 
diligence, running swiftly down the hill, and zigzagging 
round perilous corners, with little exertion of the six 
plump horses, but with a tremendous jingling of their 
bells, overtakes us, and for a mile or two you may en- 
joy a pleasant rest after the long walk. We stop at 
a place where a roofed wooden bridge crosses the river, 
turning sharp off to the left. Here we leave the big 
diligence, and climb to the top of a lesser one which is 
waiting, a vast height. And now, in the growing dark- 
ness, we proceed slowly up the valley, following the 
course of the river Aar. On the right hand, huge preci- 
pices close in the valley, from which every now and 
then a streak of white foam, hundreds of feet in height, 
shows you a waterfall. It is perfectly silent, though 
these seem so near; they are much farther off than you 
are aware. On and on, up the river, till you can see 
lights ahead, and you jolt along a very roughly-paved 
street, where in the darkness you see picturesque wooden 
houses on either hand. -This is Meyringen, one of the 
most thorough and beautiful Swiss villages to be found 
in Switzerland. What an odd Saturday evening this 



334 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

seems! Our old ways of thinking and feeling are quite 
dislocated. We stop at the door of a large hotel, built 
of wood. Everything in it seems of wood, except the 
stone staircase. It is eight o'clock in the evening, — quite 
dark ; they have not our long be9,utiful twilights there. 
And now we have dinner. Then we inspect a room 
filled with carved work in wood which is for sale, and 
select some little things which will pleasantly remind us 
of this place and time when both are far away. Finally, 
before ten o'clock, we climb the long stair, each to his 
little bare chamber, with many thoughts of those at 
home, and trying unsuccessfully to feel that this is 
Saturday night. 

But the glory and beauty of Meyringen appeared the 
next morning, — one of the sunniest, calmest, and bright- 
est Sundays that ever shone since the creation. You go 
forth from the hotel, and walk down the street, wdth the 
most picturesque wooden houses on either hand, with 
their projecting galleries and great overhanging eaves. 
Above, there is the brightest blue sky, and all round, 
snowy peaks, dazzling white, rising into the deep blue. 
Walk on till you are clear of the village, and fields of 
coarse grass spread round you ; for you will not find 
there the soft green turf of Britain, but a rough, harsh 
grass, alive with crickets and grasshoppers. We have 
some compensation for our uncertain climate and abun- 
dant rain. Yet, amid that scenery so sublime, still, and 
bright, you do not miss anything that could be desired. 
And now, on the silent Sunday morning, I have no 
doubt that, of several men whom I saw, who though 
arrayed in mountain dress each wore a white neckcloth, 
each one was thinking of his own church many hundreds 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 335 

of miles off, and hoping and asking that all might go 
well there that day. 

All round Meyringen there stand those snowy Alps. 
Let the small critic understand that we all know that 
an alp does not strictly mean a mountain, but a pasture 
high in the mountains. But in Britain, Alps mean 
mountains, and nothing else. And all round are those 
white peaks, save in the narrow opetiing where the Aar 
comes down from above, and where it rolls away below. 
From great precipices on the left hand as you look up 
the valley, streams descend in foamy falls ; and one 
among these has sometimes brought down in its flt)od 
such masses of mud and gravel as served to overspread 
half the valley. Turn up this little street, at whose end 
you can see the church, which is a Protestant one. 
Eighteen feet from the pavement there is a line drawn 
on the inside walls, showing the height to which the 
church was once filled with mud by an overflow of that 
torrent. Service is going on. "We quietly enter and 
steal to a seat by the door. A clergyman, in very ugly 
robes, is standing in the pulpit, which . looks diagonally 
across the plain interior. He is reading his sermon in a 
rather sleepy way. His robe is of blue, and a great 
white collar, turned over, is round his neck. Here is 
the best place to see a whole congregation, men and 
women, in their national dress. The men sit on one 
side of the church and the women on the other. Swiss 
women are for the most part far from pretty. They 
wear here a black bodice, with white sleeves starched 
till they seem as stifle as boards, a yellow petticoat, and 
a little black hat. The church was well filled, and the 
people seemed to listen very attentively to their pastor's 
words. 



336 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

But, for one tiling, I do not understand them, for they 
are expressed in German; and for another thing, I am 
going to worship elsewhere, so I slip quietly away. Just 
at the gate through which you pass into the churchyard, 
there is a shabby little building which I took for a school. 
No, it is the Little Church ; and here, during the sum- 
mer and autumn, you may join in the service of the 
Church of England^ A succession of clergymen come 
for a few weeks each. A little before the hour of wor- 
ship we enter the building. It is just like a very shabby 
Scotch parish school. Forms without backs occupy the 
floor ; at one corner there is an odd little enclosure 
which serves as a reading-desk and a pulpit ; and a little 
way off there is placed a very small table, which is to- 
day covered with white, and bears the elements of the 
Communion. As the congregation assembles, five-and- 
twenty persons, the clergyman {fiits on his surplice, and 
entering the little desk begins the service. I cannot but 
admire the determination this young minister shows, 
even in that shabby place, to make the worship of God 
as decorous as may be. Although there was no organ, 
there was quite a musical service ; even the Psalms being 
chanted remarkably well. Five or six young English- 
women acted as a choir. The lessons were read by an 
old gentleman standing by the little communion table ; 
but a second surplice was not forthcoming, and he was 
devoid of any robe. The sermon was a very decent 
one ; not eloquent nor striking, but plain and earnest. 
I should have liked it better if the clergyman had 
prayed, before beginning it, in the words of one of the 
usual collects. But he simply prefaced his discourse by 
the words, " In the name of the Father and of the Sou 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 337 

and of the Holy Ghost ; " and by that exceedingly silly 
shibboleth, conveyed to me his adherence to a decaying 
party, which assuredly does not consist of the wisest or 
ablest of the Anglican clergy. There are, of course, 
two or three grand exceptions ; but there is something 
fatuous in the parade of going as near Rome as may be, 
which some empty-headed youths exhibit. Let me add, 
that in the evening I went to service again. And now 
the sermon was so terribly bad, so weak and silly, that I 
found it hard to understand how any man who had 
brains to write the former discourse could possibly have 
produced it. Yet the text was one of the noblest in 
Holy Scripture. 

After the forenoon service, we walk along a great 
wall, built to defend the valley from floods, towards the 
heights on the left hand, looking up the valley ; and in 
the hot afternoon toil slowly up and up, till Meyringen is 
left far below. What is that distant sound ? Well, it 
is that of rifle-shooting ; for the men of HasH think 
Sunday afternoon the best time for practice. Let me 
confess that the perpetual reports broke in very sadly 
on the silence of the Holy Day. Yet there never was 
a nobler temple than that on which you looked, sitting 
down on a rock and gazing at the valley far below, and 
the snowy Alps beyond. You could not but think of the 
words, chanted in that morning service, " The strength 
of the? hills is His also " ! And sitting here, can one 
forget that at this hour the text is being read out in the 
church far away ; can one help shutting out the Alps for 
a little, and asking that the Blessed Spirit may carry 
the words that are to be spoken to many hearts, for 
warning, counsel, and comfort? It is quite true, that 
15 V 



338 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

when at a distance of hundreds of miles, your home 
interests grow misty" and unsubstantial ; but it is likewise 
true that at such an hour as this they press themselves 
on one with a wonderful clearness and force. My friend 
Smith told me that in two hours' lonely walking under 
Mont Blanc, on a bright, clear autumn day, he felt more 
worried by some little perplexity which soon cleared 
itself up, than at any other time in his life. And sitting 
down on the edge of a glacier, whence a stream broke 
away in thunder, with the Monarch of Mountains look- 
ing down, all he could think of was that wretched little 
vexation. 

The Sunday dinner hour at the Sauvage at Meyringen 
is four ; so let us slowly descend from this height. A 
large party dines, chiefly English. The main character- 
istic of dinner was the fish called loite, which is caught 
in the river near. There was a certain quietness be- 
coming the day ; and it was pleasant to remark that the 
greater number of our countrymen seemed to make 
Sunday a day of rest. And indeed it is inexpressibly 
pleasant, after the fatigue and hurry which attend 
travelling rapidly on through grand scenery, to have an 
occasional day on which to repose. And going to 
church, with a little congregation of one's countrymen 
and countrywomen, to join in the familiar service in a 
strange land, one felt something of that glow whicli 
came into St. Paul's heart, when after his voyafge he 
was cheered by the sight of Christian friends, and 
which made him " thank God and take courage." 

Then to the evening service, when the congregation 
was less, and the sermon so extremely bad. The setting 
sun was casting a rosy color upon the snowy peaks, as 



FROM SATUEDAY TO MONDAY. 339 

we returned to the only home one had there. And in- 
deed Sunday is the worst day at an inn. There is a 
strongly felt inconsistency between the associations of 
the day, especially if you live in Scotland, and the whole 
look of the place. And sitting in a verandah behind 
the Sauvage, with the fragrance of the trees in the twi- 
light coming up from the garden below, and looking 
across to the Falls of the Reichenbach on the other side 
of the valley, it was worrying to think of the weak 
sermon we had just heard, where one had hoped for 
that which might cheer and comfort and direct. On 
another day, in a church in a grander scene than even 
this, I sat beside a certain great preacher while a poor 
sermon was being preached with much attempt at ora- 
torical effect, and thought how different it would have 
been had that man occupied the pulpit. Perhaps he 
thought so too, though he did not say so. But indeed, 
arrayed in garments of gray, and with a wideawa,ke hat 
lying beside him, that eminent clergyman was like a 
locomotive engine when the steam is not up. He could 
not have preached then ; at least, not without two hours 
of previous thought. Before the best railway engine 
can dash away with its burden, you must fill its boiler 
with water, and kindle its fire. And when you may see 
that clergyman ascend his pulpit in decorous canonicals 
on a Sunday, charged with his subject, with every nerve 
tense, and with the most earnest purpose on his rather 
frightened face, to deliver his message to many hundreds 
of immortal beings ; if you had previously seen the 
easy figure in the light-gray suit sitting in a pew at 
Chamouni, you would discern a like difference to that 
between the engine standing cold and powerless in the 



340 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

shed, and the engine coming slowly up to the platform, 
with the compressed strength of a thousand horses 
fretting for escape or employment, to take away the 
express train. 

To-morrow morning we have to be up at half-past 
four ; so let us go to bed. First, let us have a look at 
the quiet street, indistinct in the twilight, and at the 
outline of encircling hills. 

There are places in Switzerland where you do not 
sleep so well as might be desired. A host of wretched 
little enemies scarify your skin, and drive sleep from your 
eyes. The Sauvage at Meyringen is not one of these 
places. It is a thoroughly clean and respectable house. 
Yet for the guidance of tourists who may know even 
less than the writer (which is barely conceivable), let 
it be said that there is an effectual means of keeping 
such hostile troops away. Procure a quantity of cam- 
phor. Wear some of it in a bag about you, — a very 
little bag, — and even though you sit next a disgust- 
ing, infragrant, unwashed person in a diligence, nothing 
will assail you. And at night rub a little of that mate- 
rial into powder between your palms, and sprinkle it 
over your bed, having turned back the bed-clothes. 
Do that, and you are safe. If you rub yourself over 
with camphor besides, you are secure as though wrapped 
in triple brass. You have made yourself an offensive 
object to the aesthetic sensibilities of fleas, and they will 
reject you with contempt. They will do this, even 
though, uncamphored, you might be (in the South Sea 
Island sense) a remarkably good man. You remember 
how an Englishman once spoke to a chief of a tribe out 
there. He spoke of a certain zealous missionary. " Ah, 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 341 

he was a very good man, a very good man," said the 
Englishman, truly and heartily. " Yes," said the chief, 
not so warmly ; " him was a good man, but him was 
very tough ! " The chief spoke with the air of one who 
says critically, " The venison at Smith's was not so 
good as usual last night." And the Englishman for- 
bore to enquire as to the data on which the chief pro- 
nounced his judgment. No doubt he had experimental 
knowledge on that subject. 

It is a great deal easier to get up in the dark at half 
past four in the morning in Switzerland than it is any- 
where in Britain. There is something so bracing and 
exhilarating in the mountain air, that you are easily 
equal to exertion which would knock you up elsewhere. 
Men who at home could not walk five or six miles 
without fatigue, walk their thirty miles over a Pass 
without difficulty ; come in to dinner with a good appe- 
tite ; and after dinner, without the least of that feeling 
of stiffness which commonly follows any unusual exer- 
tion, are out of doors again, sauntering in the twilight, 
or visiting some sight that is within easy reach. Yes- 
terday was a resting day with us, so to-day we had 
breakfast a little after five ; and then, the three black 
leather bags being disposed on a black horse, that 
scrambled like a cat over ground that would have 
ruined an English steed's knees in the first quarter 
of a mile, we set off at six o'clock to cross the Pass 
of the Great Scheideck to Grindelwald. 

First, along the road up the valley for a mile or so ; 
then turn to the right, and begin to climb the mountain 
which on that side walls the valley in. The ascent is 
very steep, and the path consists of smooth and slippery 



842 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

pieces of rock. You soon come to understand the wis- 
dom of your guide, who requires you to walk at a very 
slow pace. That is your only chance, if you are to 
climb such ways for several successive hours. The 
inexperienced traveller pushes on at a rapid pace, and 
speedily is quite exhausted After a little climbing, 
you may turn to the right, where you will see the tor- 
rent of the Reichenbach go down nearly two thousand 
feet in a succession of rapids and falls, hurrying to the 
Aar in the valley below. On, higher and higher, till 
you see the huge snowy mass of the Wetterhorn far 
before you on the left, and you enter a little plain of 
bright green grass, dotted with many picturesque 
wooden chalets. On, higher and higher, till you stop 
to rest and have something to eat at the baths of Rosen- 
laui, a pretty inn near a rock where the Reichenbach 
comes roaring out of a cleft. In a large room here, you 
will be tempted to buy specimens of wood-carving, very 
beautifully done. Having rested, you determine to 
make a little deviation from your way. Twenty min- 
utes' stiff pulling up the steep hillside, over a very 
rough path to the left, and you cross a bridge that spans 
a fissure in the rock two hundred feet deep, where a 
little stream foams along. Now you stand beside the 
glacier of Rosenlaui, not large, but beautifully pure. 
A cave has been cut out for many yards into the beau- 
tiful blue ice, and into it you go. It is a singular place 
in which to find yourself, that cave, or rather tunnel, 
in the solid ice. The air is cold, the floor is somewhat 
wet ; a soft light comes through the ice from without. 
But there is no time to linger unduly, and we return 
down the rough slope to the spot, near the inn, where 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 343 

the guide and packhorse are waiting. Now, upwards 
again, by a very muddy path through a long wood of 
pines. But gradually the pines cease, and the ground 
grows bare, till you enter on a tract where the snow lies 
some inches deep. Parched as are your hands and your 
tongue, there is a great temptation to refresh both with 
handfuls of that snow, which in a little while will leave 
you more parched than ever. But after no long climb- 
ing on the snow, you reach the summit of the Pass, 
six thousand five hundred feet above the sea. Here 
you will find a little inn, the Steinhock, where a simple 
but abundant repast awaits the travellers. Thirty or 
forty, almost all English, sit down to copious supplies 
of stewed chamois, washed down with prodigious 
draughts of thin claret. Here you rest an hour. And 
going out, you look at the Wetterhorn, which rises in a 
perpendicular wall of limestone rock many thousand 
feet in height, beginning to rise apparently a hundred 
yards ofi". But your eye deceives you in this clear air 
and amid these tremendous magnitudes. The base of 
the precipice is more than a mile away. And when 
you begin to descend towards Grindelwald, the awful 
wall of rock seems to hang over you, though nowhere 
you approach within a mile of it. It is not safe to go 
nearer, for every now and then you hear a tremendous 
roar, and looking towards the Wetterhorn you see a 
mass of what looks like powdery snow sliding swiftly 
down the rock. You are astonished that so small a 
thing should make such a noise. But that is an ava- 
lanche ; and if you were nearer, you would know that 
what seemed powdery snow was indeed hundreds of 
tons of ice, in huge blocks and masses. And if a village 



344 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

of chalets had stood in the way, that slide of powdery 
snow would have swept it to destruction. 

It is a fact well known to students of physical philos- 
ophy, that it is incomparably easier to go down a steep 
hill than to ascend one. This is a result of the great 
and beneficial law of gravitation, according to which all 
material bodies tend towards the centre of the earth. 
And the consequence of this law is, that when we set off 
to descend from this height, we do it very easily and 
rapidly. A horse, indeed, looks a poor and awkward 
figure scrambling down these paths; but if you have 
in your hands that long, light, tough staff of ash shod 
with iron which is called an Alpen-stock, you will 
bound over the masses of rock at a great pace, doing 
things which in a less exhilarating air you would shrink 
from. All the way down on the left, apparently close 
by, there is that awful wall of the Wetterhorn, and you 
may see other peaks, of which the most noticeable or at 
least the most memorable is the Schreckhorn. By and 
by, by the path, you may discern a man standing be- 
side a great square wooden box, like a small tub fixed 
on a stake of wood four or five feet high. And when 
the travellers approach, the man will fit to that box a 
wooden pipe eight feet long, and sticking his tongue into 
the lesser end of the pipe, will vehemently blow into it. 
That rude apparatus is the Alpine horn, of which you 
have heard folk talk and sing. There is nothing spe- 
cially attractive to the ear, in the few notes brayed 
forth; but what grand echoes, doubled and redoubled, 
are awakened up in the breast of that huge wall, and 
die away in the upper air and mountain ! Produce 
from your purse a liberal tip, and ask the mountaineer 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 845 

to let you try his horn. You blow with all your might, 
like my friend Mac PufF sounding his own trumpet, but 
there is dead silence, as when to such as know him well 
Mac Puff does so sound ; a feeble hissing of air from the 
great tub is all that rewards your labor. And one 
always respects a person who can do what one cannot 
do. Down along the slope, till, turning a little way to 
the left, you approach the Upper Glacier of Grindel- 
wald, filling up the great gulf between the "VTetterhorn 
and the Schreckhorn. Into this glacier you enter by 
an artificial tunnel ; but the ice is dirty, and streams of 
water pour from it on your head. Thus you speedily 
retreat. Great belts of fir-trees fringe the glacier, 
which, like other glaciers, comes far below the snow- 
line. . For as the ice which forms the glacier gradually 
melts away at the lower extremity next the valley, the 
ice from above presses on and fills its place. The gla- 
cier is in fact a slowly advancing stream of ice. And 
all the glaciers are gradually retreadng into the moun- 
tains, as increasing cultivation and population make the 
lower extremity melt away somewhat faster than the 
waste can be supplied. Starting from far in the icy 
bosom of the Alps, in the region of perpetual snow, the 
Grindelwald glaciers come down to within a few yards 
of as green and rich grass as (if you were a cow) you 
would desire to eat. 

Now we walk for an hour through meadows in the 
valley, pausing at a chalet to have some Alpine straw- 
berries, small and flavorless ; and so at five o'clock on 
Monday afternoon enter Grindelwald. The inns are 
filled with travellers ; but we are lucky in finding space 
at the Adler, whose windows look full on the Lower 
15* 



346 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

Glacier, at the distance of a mile. From a great black- 
looking cave at the end of the glacier, a river breaks 
away, of the dirty whity-brown water that comes from 
glaciers. It is a curious thing to see a river starting, 
full grown from the first. Look to the left of the lower 
end of the glacier, the ground meets the ice. Look to 
the right, and there a pretty big river, that looks as if it 
had burst out from the earth, is flowing away as if it 
had run a score of miles. 

Let the traveller refresh himself by much-needed 
ablution ; they give you pretty large basins here. And 
then descending, sit down to dinner at the table-d liote. 
A large party, almost all Germans. So are the waiters. 
Thus, if you express to a neighbor your conviction that 
something presented to you as chamois is in truth a 
portion of a very tough and aged goat, no offence is 
given. 

Shall it be recorded how, after dinner, we sat in the 
twilight on a terrace hard by, looking at the glacier and 
the Alps \ how, as it darkened down, we entered the 
dining-room again, and there beheld, seated at tea, a cer- 
tain great Anglican prelate ? Shall it be recorded how, 
if one had never seen nor heard of him before, you 
might have learned something of his eloquence, genial- 
ity, and tact, transcending those of ordinary men, even 
from that hour and a half before he retired to rest? 
Shall it be recorded how, having begun to tell a story 
to his own party, he gradually and easily, as he dis- 
cerned others listening with interest, addressed himself 
to them, till he ended his story in the audience of all in 
that large chamber ? And shall it be recorded how two 
pretty young English girls sat and gazed with rapt and 



FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 347 

silent admiration on the great man's face? Two or 
three young fellows who had sought during that day to 
commend themselves to these fair beings felt themselves 
(you could see) hopelessly eclipsed and cut out, and 
regarded the unconscious bishop with looks of fury. 
Happily he did not know, so it did him no harm. 

My friend Mac Spoon recently dilated, in my hearing, 
on the advantages of Pocket Diaries ; which (as wise, 
men know) are not records of passing and past events, 
but memoranda of engagements. " You note down in 
these," said he, " all you have to do ; while yet if your 
book should be lost, and so fall into the hands of a stran- 
ger, he could not for his life understand the meaning of 
your inscriptions. Thus," he went on, "you see how 
under the head of Thursday, April 3 2d, 1864, I have 
marked Jericho Train at 10.30. Now if that were to 
fall into a stranger's possession, he could make nothing 
of it, he would not know what it meant at all. But as 
for me, the moment I look at it, I know that it means 
that on Thursday, April 3 2d, 1864, I am to go to Jeri- 
cho by the 10.30 train." Such were the individual's 
words. And now, for the sake of those readers who 
could not understand that mysterious inscription, I think 
it expedient distinctly to declare, that the reason why 
this history is called From Saturday to Monday is, that 
it gives an account of historical events, beginning with 
Saturday and ending on Monday. And thus, having 
reached Monday evening (for soon after the bishop's 
story everybody went to bed), my task is done. It can 
never transpire, what happened on the Tuesday. Per- 
haps something happened of great public interest. But 
if I were to record it here, then it would appear as if 



348 FROM SATURDAY TO MONDAY. 

what occuired on Tuesday occured between Saturday 
and Monday, -which is absurd. 

The remembrance of foreign travel is pleasanter than 
the travel itself. For in remembrance there are none 
of the hosts that are dispelled by copious camphor ; no 
wear of the muscles, nor of the lungs and heart ; no eyes 
hot and blinded with the sunsliine on the snow ; no 
parched throat and leathery tongue ; no old goat's flesh 
disguished as chamois venison. The little drawbacks 
are forgot ; but the absence of care and labor, the blue 
sky and the bright sun, glacier and cataract, and the 
snowy Alps, remain. 




CONCLUSION. 




r is the way of Providence, in most cases, 
gradually to wean us from the things which 
we must learn to resign ; and it has been 
so with this holiday-time, now all but end- 
ed. It is not now what it was when we came here. 
The leaves wore their summer green when we came, 
now they have faded into autumn russet and gold. The 
paths are strewn deep with those that have fallen ; and 
even in the quiet sunshiny afternoon, some bare trees 
look wintry against the sky. Like the leaves, the holi- 
day-time has faded, — it is outgrown. The appetite 
for work has revived, and all of us now look forward 
with as fresh interest to going back to the city to work 
as we once did to coming away from the city to rest 
and play. 

We have been weaned by slow degrees. Nature is 
hedging us in. The days are shortening fast; the 
'breeze strikes chill in the afternoons as they darken. 
The sea sometimes feels bitter, even though you enter it 
head foremost. Nor have there lacked days of ceaseless 
rain and of keen north wind. Two lighthouses, one 
casting fitful flashes across the water and one burning 
with a steady hVht, become great features of the scene 



350 CONCLUSION. 

by seven o'clock in the evening. A little later, there is 
a line of lights that stretches for miles at the base of 
the dark hills along the opposite shore ; indoor occupa- 
tions have supplanted evening walks ; yet a day or two, 
and those lights will no more be seen. The inhabitants 
of the dwellings they make visible will have returned to 
the great city, and very many of the pretty cottages and 
houses will remain untenanted through the long winter- 
time. 

As these last days are passing, one feels the vague re- 
morse which is felt when most things draw to an end. 
One feels as if we might have made more of this time 
of quiet amid these beautiful hills. Surely we ought to 
have enjoyed the place and the time more ! Thus we 
are disposed to blame ourselves, but to blame ourselves 
unjustly. You would be aware of the like tendency, 
parting from almost anything, no matter how much you 
had made of it. You will know the vague remorse 
when dear friends die, thinking you ought to have been 
kinder to them ; you will know it, though you did for 
them all that could be done by mortal. And when you 
come to die, my friend, looking back on the best-spent 
life, you will think how differently you would spend it 
were it to be spent again. You will feel as if your tal- 
ent had been very poorly occupied, and doubtless with 
good reason, here. 

Last night, there was a magnificent sunset. You 
saw the great red ball above the mountains, visibly 
going down. It was curious to watch the space be- 
tween the sun and the dark ridge beneath it lessening 
moment by moment, till the sun slowly sunk from sight. 



CONCLUSION. 351 

Of course, he had been approaching his setting just as 
fast all day as in those last minutes above the horizon ; 
but there was something infinitely more striking about 
the very end. At broad noonday, it is not so easy to 
fully take in the great truth which Dr. Johnson had 
engraved on the dial of his watch, that he might be 
often reminded of it, — the solemn Nu^^ yap epxerai. It 
is in the last minutes that we are made to think that we 
ought to have valued the sun more when we had him, 
and valued more the day he measured out. 

Day by day this volume has grown up through this 
holiday-time. In its earlier portion, the author diligently 
revised the chapters you have read. And by and by, 
the leisurely postman brought the daily pages of pleas- 
ing type, in which things look so different from what 
they look in the cramped magazine printing. Great is 
the enjoyment which antique ornaments and large initial 
letters afford to a simple mind. 

And now it is the forenoon of our last day here ; we 
go early to-morrow morning. Play-time is past, and 
work-time is to begin. I hear voices outside, and the 
pattering of little feet ; there are the sea and the hills ; 
and all the place is pervaded by the sound of the waves. 
On no day through our time here did the place look as 
it does now ; it wears the peculiar aspect which comes 
over places from which you are parting. How fast the 
holidays have slipped away ! And what a beautiful 
scene this is ! What a pretty little Gothic church it is, 
in which for these Sundays that are gone the writer has 
taken part of the duty ; how green the ivy on the cliffs, 
and the paths through the woods ; what perpetual life 
in that ceaseless fluctuation of which you seldom lose 



352 CONCLUSION. 

sight for long ! But we must all set our faces to the 
months of work once more, thankful to feel fit for them ; 
not without some anxiety in the prospect of them ; 
looking for the guidance and help of that kindest Hand 
which has led throuofh the like before. 




Cambridge : Stereot^'ped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



